The leader of the opposition in Brazil's Senate, Rogério Marinho (PL party, Rio Grande do Norte), filed Resolution Bill 54/2026 on Friday (18). The text gives the Senate president, Davi Alcolumbre (União party, Amapá), 30 working days to decide whether to accept or reject impeachment requests against justices of the STF, Brazil's Supreme Federal Court, and other authorities.
How the new procedure would work
The Senate's internal rules set no deadline for that preliminary decision today, and allow no automatic transfer of authority if the president stays silent, according to news site Poder360. Under the bill, if the president does not rule, the case goes to the Senate Board, the Mesa Diretora, which would have another 30 working days to decide by simple majority. Rejection would be limited to four situations: the accuser lacks standing, the accused has definitively left office, formal legal requirements were not met, or the facts, even if true, do not amount to a crime of responsibility.
The bill also creates an appeal to the full chamber. Nine senators could file it within 30 working days of the decision's publication, and it would enter the agenda within five ordinary deliberative sessions. Approval would take 49 votes, three fifths of the 81 senators. According to Folha de S.Paulo, if a complaint is not examined by the president and then by the Board within the deadlines, it will be considered accepted once 49 of the 81 senators sign a request to that effect.
Pressure on Alcolumbre
The proposal lands at a moment of tension with the Senate president. Folha reports that Alcolumbre is holding back votes on impeachment requests against STF justices amid the deepest crisis in the court's history. For the Gazeta do Povo newspaper, the bill works as a mechanism against shelving the requests, in the face of Alcolumbre's resistance to moving them forward.
In the bill's justification, Marinho writes that the lack of deadlines allows a request to sit unexamined indefinitely, with effects similar to an archive order issued without any formal decision. "In a state under the rule of law, no authority stands above the constitutional order," the senator writes. He says the goal is to make the procedure more predictable and to prevent both indefinite paralysis and the trivialization of impeachment requests.
To take effect, the resolution must pass in committees, including the CCJ, the Senate's Constitution and Justice Committee, and on the floor. Because it regulates internal legislative matters, it does not go to the president of the Republic for sanction, according to Poder360. The immediate obstacle is the agenda itself: as Folha notes, the Senate president decides what comes to a vote. Once a request is accepted, a special committee would have 120 days to conclude its deliberations under the Senate rules and Law 1.079/1950, Brazil's impeachment law.