Brazil’s attorney general asks the Supreme Court to strike the laws that legalised bets

On Friday 2 October 2026, the Advocacia-Geral da União (AGU) told the Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) that provisions of the laws which legalised fixed-odds betting are unconstitutional. Agência Brasil and Estadão report that the office asked the court to declare Laws 13.756 of 2018 and 14.790 of 2023 incompatible with the Constitution. The 2018 statute created online fixed-odds betting. The 2023 statute, the Bets Law, regulated it.

CNN Brasil describes the same Friday filing as a change of position: the AGU asked the court to declare unconstitutional the core of the 2018 and 2023 laws, and specifically articles 29 to 35 of the 2018 law, the articles that created the modality. The request is to strike the provisions that form the legal core of fixed-odds betting.

Where the brief sits

The filing was lodged in the action the Procuradoria-Geral da República (PGR) brought in 2024, on the view that the laws do not protect bettors. Justice Luiz Fux is the rapporteur. He had asked the AGU to comment. CNN calls that action an ADI, a direct action of unconstitutionality.

The position change is CNN’s account, not Agência Brasil’s or Estadão’s. CNN reports that in another case the AGU had argued the legislation was “still constitutional, subject to a process of progressive unconstitutionality” (ainda constitucional, sujeita a processo de progressiva inconstitucionalização), because the rules were recent. It now says monitoring showed the executive steps were not enough.

Agência Brasil quotes the filing. Estadão repeats the same passage and credits Agência Brasil. In that quote, the AGU says the regime of Laws 13.756/2018 and 14.790/2023 “was extensively flawed”: an exploitative permissiveness that could not be squared with human dignity, public health, and the existential minimum (mínimo existencial).

What the filing says went wrong

Agência Brasil and Estadão say the AGU points to family debt, a failure to protect children and adolescents, effects on the formal economy, and a 140% rise in care under the Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) for people with disorders caused by gambling addiction.

CNN alone dates it: a 140% rise, between 2018 and 2025, in SUS care related to pathological gambling and gambling mania. CNN also reports figures and notes inside the filing: about R$62.5 billion taken from family budgets in 2025, and a Ministry of Development and Social Assistance note on food insecurity, debt, vulnerability, and weaker family and social ties. CNN adds that the filing cites the use of betting platforms for money laundering.

Not the case against the provisional ban

CNN says this action is not the set of cases that attack the provisional measure which prohibited bets. The AGU says it will file in those cases when it is formally notified.

The shutdown dates are on Agência Brasil and Estadão, not on CNN. Platforms have until 5 October to pay remaining balances. From 6 October, betting sites and apps are fully blocked. Estadão adds that 5 October is the day after the first round of the election. The industry request to suspend that measure is a separate story: Brazil betting groups ask the STF to suspend the provisional ban.

Estadão, on its own, says that earlier the same Friday Justice Fux gave the AGU 72 hours to inform the court on the measure that bans bets, so a decision on that measure would fall after the first round.

A filing is not a ruling. 18+. If gambling stops being fun, see responsible play.