Supreme Court begins trial of Indigenous land claims deadline

Justice Flávio Dino joined the rapporteur, putting the score at 2-0. The case is being heard in the virtual plenary and will run through Thursday (18). Under this procedure, justices do not meet to debate the case; they submit their votes on a digital platform.

The court resumed analysis of the matter last week. In two in-person sessions, justices heard oral arguments from the parties and interested stakeholders.

In Mendes’s view, setting the temporal cutoff at the date of the Constitution creates a “situation that is difficult to prove for Indigenous communities that were historically dehumanized by state or private practices of forced removal, killings, and persecution.”

The justice also proposed a 10-year deadline for the federal government to complete all pending demarcations. According to him, there has been an “omission” in concluding cases. “More than 35 years after the promulgation of the Federal Constitution, it seems to me that sufficient time has elapsed for the definitive maturation of the issue, such that there is no longer any way to postpone solving this problem, making it incumbent on the Executive branch to properly address the matter and conclude demarcation procedures within a reasonable, yet peremptory, timeframe,” Mendes said.

The senior justice of the court also declared unconstitutional the veto on expanding the boundaries of already demarcated Indigenous lands, arguing that correcting administrative acts is guaranteed by the Constitution when there is a “serious and incurable” error in the conduct of the procedure. He further defended economic activities on Indigenous lands by the local communities themselves, including tourism, provided the benefits reach the entire community and land tenure is preserved.

In 2023, the Supreme Court struck down the temporal milestone thesis. At the time, the vote was 9-2, and the cases were reported by Justice Edson Fachin. In response, Congress approved a bill reinstating the thesis backed by agribusiness representatives. As a result, several political parties and Indigenous representative organizations filed cases with the Supreme Court seeking both the validation and the overturning of the law.

The cases were assigned to Mendes, who ordered the creation of a conciliation table for the parties to seek a negotiated solution. In June 2025, the commission presented an agreement signed by the federal government, Congress, Indigenous peoples, and farmers, after 23 hearings.

In the ongoing judgment, if the justices approve the agreed terms, the text will be sent to Congress as suggestions for legislative amendments.

The Supreme Court’s review comes after the Senate approved, by 59 votes to 15, a proposal to amend the Constitution (PEC) reinstating the temporal milestone. The vote was a reaction to a preliminary injunction by Mendes in another case that tightened rules for impeaching justices, determining that proceedings could only be initiated by the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGR). Last week, however, Mendes granted a Senate request to reverse that decision and removed the case from the court’s agenda.