TSE Will Vote Virtually on Order to Remove Posts About Nossa Senhora Aparecida

Overview

• TSE president Kassio Nunes Marques scheduled a virtual plenary to start Sept. 30 to decide whether to uphold Minister André Mendonça’s interim order that removed social posts about Nossa Senhora Aparecida.
• Mendonça issued the removal on Sept. 25 after complaints that posts wrongly linked presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro to a plot to strip the patronage of Nossa Senhora Aparecida and asked X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube to take content down.
• The Supreme Court produced two conflicting interventions in quick succession when Minister Flávio Dino restored the posts and Minister Luiz Fux later reversed Dino’s move, with STF president Edson Fachin declining to put the clashes on the court’s agenda.
• Platforms largely removed the contested material after Fux’s order to restore the TSE measure, and Mendonça plans to defend his action by citing recent Supreme Court precedent that broadens platform responsibility to remove replications of judicially recognized false or offensive claims.
• The case tests which court has final say on urgent electoral content, raises tensions between free speech and protection from false religiously sensitive claims, and could set near-term rules for how social networks handle election misinformation.