Last Friday (19), the 6th Panel of the Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region (TRF1) partially amended a lower-court ruling and upheld Dilma Rousseff’s claim, ordering the Brazilian state to provide economic reparations in the form of a monthly, permanent, and ongoing payment, calculated on the basis of the average salary for the position, job, or function held by the claimant at the time. The moral damages award was maintained at R$400,000 (about US$ 73,000).
Rousseff argued that material reparation should not be confused with salary restitution linked to reinstatement in her former workplace, but rather understood as a form of federal reparation, granted as a monthly, permanent, and ongoing payment of an indemnificatory nature.
The appellant noted that, in a review of an administrative appeal, the Full Council of the Amnesty Commission of the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship recognized that her removal from paid professional activities was motivated exclusively by political persecution. The commission acknowledged her status as a political amnesty beneficiary and her right to reinstatement to her position, or an equivalent one, at the Foundation for Economics and Statistics. At that time, she was granted economic reparation in a lump-sum payment, with the corresponding financial effects.
In reviewing the case, the reporting judge, Federal Appellate Judge João Carlos Mayer Soares, emphasized that economic reparation for violations of fundamental rights committed during the military regime is grounded in Article 8, paragraph 3, of Brazil’s Transitional Constitutional Provisions Act (ADCT/1988), as regulated by Law No. 10,559/2002. This law establishes that the political amnesty regime includes: (i) the right to official recognition as an amnesty beneficiary; (ii) economic reparation of an indemnificatory nature, either as a lump-sum payment or as a monthly, permanent, and ongoing benefit; (iii) reinstatement or promotion upon retirement, under the conditions set forth in Article 8 of the ADCT; and (iv) the counting, for all legal purposes, of the period during which the political amnesty beneficiary was forced to suspend professional activities due to punishment or the well-founded threat of punishment for exclusively political reasons.
In this case, the court found clear evidence that the claimant was subjected to repeated and prolonged acts of political persecution during the military regime, including illegal arrests and systematic practices of physical and psychological torture carried out by state agents. These acts had lasting effects on her physical and mental integrity, constituting a serious violation of fundamental rights and justifying compensation for moral damages.
The judge further noted that, under Law No. 10,559/2002, there is a distinction between the forms of economic reparation. Lump-sum payments apply in cases where there is no proof of an employment relationship at the time of political persecution, while monthly, permanent, and ongoing payments are guaranteed to amnesty beneficiaries who can demonstrate such a link, unless they expressly opt otherwise.
According to the appellate judge, in line with the case law of Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice, the amount of the monthly payment should be determined based on information provided by companies, trade unions, professional councils, or entities of the indirect public administration to which the political amnesty beneficiary was linked at the time of punishment. This ensures the payment reflects the remuneration the individual would have received had they not been subjected to political persecution.
In the same vein, the rapporteur emphasized that reinstatement to employment should not be confused with indemnification, as the legal and factual grounds for reinstatement and for economic reparation are distinct. Accordingly, economic reparation received by a political amnesty beneficiary may be combined with remuneration resulting from reinstatement to public service, since the former is indemnificatory in nature, while the latter stems from the effective return to public office.
The judge also underscored that there is no legal prohibition against combining economic reparation with compensation for moral damages, “as these are indemnificatory payments based on different grounds and serving distinct purposes: the former aimed at restoring patrimonial losses, including actual damages and lost profits, and the latter intended to protect moral integrity as an expression of personality rights.”
