Justice André Mendonça of Brazil's Superior Electoral Court (TSE) on Thursday (17) rejected a lawsuit seeking to block the 15.04% increase in the Bolsa Família welfare payment. He dismissed the case on procedural grounds, without ruling on the legality of the measure, which President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced that same morning, 17 days before the first round of the presidential election.

The suit was filed by federal deputy Zé Trovão of the right-wing PL party, a reelection candidate from Santa Catarina and an ally of Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the party's presidential nominee. Assigned the case by lot, Mendonça applied TSE precedent holding that a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies has no standing to sue a presidential candidate, because the two offices are contested in different electoral districts: Zé Trovão runs in his state, Lula nationwide.

"I note that the finding of lack of standing implies no ruling on the legality or constitutionality of the Bolsa Família increase, nor on whether it falls under Article 73, Paragraph 10, of Law 9,504/1997," Mendonça wrote in the decision.

Filed hours before the ruling, the suit asked for an injunction to stop the government from applying the new value until the case was decided or the election was over. Zé Trovão argued that "the intervention of the Electoral Court" was necessary to keep the administrative machinery and public funds from being used in a way that could "undermine equal opportunity among candidates". According to InfoMoney, the deputy claimed the increase could amount to conduct barred for public officials during a campaign.

The raise and the government's defense

With the adjustment, the program's floor rises from 600 to 691 reais a month, and the average payment goes from 675 to 777 reais. The new values take effect in October, with payments starting on the 19th, between the first round and a possible runoff. The Planning Ministry puts the cost at 5.8 billion reais this year and about 22 billion reais in 2027.

The government says the adjustment only restores inflation accumulated since the program was overhauled in 2023. "The Bolsa Família law gives us authorization to make this inflation adjustment, to guarantee the purchasing power of Bolsa Família beneficiaries, the most vulnerable population of this country," said Planning Minister Bruno Moretti, who denied any link between the measure and the election. The government's legal office, the Advocacia-Geral da União, says the 2023 law allows the executive to correct benefit values and bars reducing them. The payment had been frozen since July 2022, when then-president Jair Bolsonaro raised it from 400 to 600 reais on the eve of that year's election.

The ruling closes this case but sets no TSE position on the merits. The legality of the increase and its compatibility with electoral rules remain undecided at the court, while the new values take effect in the month of the election.