Brazil

Law No. 4717 of 1965 established the procedure for filing a popular action (ação popular), which had been created in the 1934 Constitution. This Constitution referred to the popular action as a means to nullify acts that harmed the patrimony of public entities. The 1965 law, however, expanded its scope by adopting a broad definition of public patrimony that encompasses “assets and rights with economic, artistic, aesthetic, historical or touristic value” (Article 1, paragraph 1). Popular actions henceforth could be used to protect “diffuse interests” that pertained to multiple individuals, but there was no legal definition of such diffuse interests.

In 1985, the Civic Public Action Law (Law No. 7347, “CPA Law”) established that a civic public action (ação civil pública, CPA) was to be used to protect the environment, consumer rights, and assets and rights of artistic, aesthetic, historical, touristic, or scenic value, but it also failed to provide a definition of these diffuse interests. The statute was later amended to further broaden the scope of CPAs, which also cover urban planning, the economic order and “other diffuse or collective interests.”

The 1988 Constitution referred to collective fundamental rights and to a collective writ of mandamus that could be used to obtain injunctions in protection of collective and diffuse interests without defining them. It was only in 1990 that categories of transindividual rights were first included in a legal statute. Law No. 8078/1990, the Consumer Defense Code (CDC), established the classification of transindividual rights into diffuse, collective, or homogeneous individual rights and further expanded the scope of protection for such interests. The provisions of the CDC pertaining to transindividual rights are generally applicable (i.e., not only applicable to consumer rights): pursuant to Article 21 of the CPA Law, Title III of the CDC applies to all CPAs.

According to the National Council of Justice (CNJ), 105,429 collective actions were filed in 2025. In the same year, over 120,000 collective cases were decided, and in early 2026 there were over 215,000 pending collective actions in the Brazilian Judiciary. Collective actions cover multiple areas, such as:

• consumer protection (defective products, misleading advertising, product recalls, consumer credit issues, unfair contractual practices);
• environmental protection (collective actions are the most adequate vehicle to discuss environmental accidents, as they can provide both reparation and compensation, and allow courts to supervise compliance with court ordered reparation measures);
• competition law (collective actions for the protection of homogenous individual rights can provide compensation for those who were affected by anticompetitive practices);
• urban planning and housing rights;
• Indigenous and Quilombola rights (collective actions are the most adequate vehicle to protect the collective rights and practices of traditional communities);
• securities (misrepresentation, securities fraud, insider trading, management misconduct);
• data protection and privacy;
• labor and employment rights; and
• protection of the rights of vulnerable groups such as children, disabled persons, and elderly citizens.

The current class action regime in Brazil is governed by the Constitution and multiple statutes. The main provisions are found in the CPA Law and the CDC, but the procedures for popular actions and collective writs of mandamus are governed by their respective specific statutes (the aforementioned Law No. 4717 and Law No. 12016 of 2009). Statutes governing specific areas of law also refer to collective actions, establishing that the rights therein may also be collectively enforced (see Section 2.2, below).

The definitions of transindividual rights adopted by the CDC are not limited to specific areas of law (nor are they limited to consumer rights, given their inclusion in the CDC). As such, there is no closed list of collective rights or of individual rights that can be protected collectively. Nonetheless, a large number of statutes pertaining to specific areas of law contain provisions for collective enforcement, such as:

• Environmental Law (Law No. 6938/1981);
• Competition Defense Act (Law No. 12529/2011);
• Administrative Misconduct Act (Law No. 8429/1992);
• Children and Adolescents Statute (Law No. 8069/1990);
• Elderly Persons Statute (Law No. 10741/2003);
• Persons with Disabilities Statute (Law No. 13146/2015);
• Racial Equality Statute (Law No. 12288/2010); and
• General Data Protection Law (Law No. 13709/2018).

Article 1 of the CPA Law establishes that the statute governs liability actions due to patrimonial and non-patrimonial damages relating to environmental rights, consumer rights, assets and rights of artistic, aesthetic, historical, touristic or scenic value, urban planning, the economic order, and other diffuse or collective interests.

Article 1 of the Popular Action Law refers to claims for the annulment or declaration of nullity of acts that harm public patrimony (defined as assets and rights with economic, artistic, aesthetic, historical, or touristic value).

Article 81 of the CDC defines transindividual rights as:

• diffuse interests or rights which are indivisible, held by indeterminate persons and linked by factual circumstances;
• collective interests or rights which are indivisible, held by a group, category or class of persons linked to each other or to the other party by a base legal relationship; and
• homogeneous individual interests or rights that share a common origin.

A single CPA may be brought in respect of a combination of breaches of diffuse, collective, and homogeneous individual rights.

Collective actions proceed with a pleadings stage, the definition of controversial issues by the court, and an evidentiary stage, if necessary. The claimant must file detailed submissions providing allegations of facts and legal grounds. The court will conduct a preliminary assessment of the claimant’s standing and of compliance with procedural rules and order service. Once served, the defendant will have a fixed deadline to provide a comprehensive defense. Oral or technical evidence may be dispensed with if the court is satisfied with the documentary evidence provided by the parties. Court-appointed experts will play a pivotal role if technical evidence is required.

Decisions may be subject to three levels of appeals:

• a full review of facts and law before the court of appeals;
• review of the application of federal law by the Superior Court of Justice (STJ); and
• review of constitutional issues by the Supreme Court (STF).

Once final or enforceable, decisions might be subject to specific enforcement proceedings (see Section 3.8, below). The Public Prosecutor’s Office may conduct administrative investigations prior to the filing of a CPA to gather evidence through document requests and witness testimony; such investigations may lead to settlement agreements known as consent agreements (i.e., avoiding the filing of a CPA altogether, see Section 3.8, below).

Claimants of collective actions do not pay costs or attorney’s fees – even if their case is unsuccessful. Pursuant to Article 87 of the CDC, only in cases of claims made in bad faith may a claimant be ordered to pay the costs incurred by the prevailing defendant. Brazilian law has therefore made collective actions cost-free to encourage public interest litigation.

Reparation provisions in settlement agreements may take years to be fully complied with (e.g., in environmental cases) and a CPA will remain active throughout so that compliance may be supervised by the court. According to the CNJ, on average a first instance decision in collective action occurs after 693 days but may take longer according to the type of collective action (popular actions take on average 1,260 days) or the court where the action was filed (federal courts take on average 1,092 days).

Article 5 of the CPA Law lists the parties that have standing to bring CPAs:

• the Public Prosecutor’s Office;
• the Public Defender’s Office;
• federal, state, and municipal governments;
• autonomous government agencies and public foundations (such as consumer protection agencies); and
• associations with institutional purposes related to the subject matter of the claims and which have been formally incorporated one year prior to the filing of the CPA.

All these entities are deemed “co-legitimate” parties to bring CPAs and may intervene in a CPA filed by another co-legitimate party as a co-claimant at any stage before judgment.

Any Brazilian citizen can file a popular action pursuant to Article 1 of the Popular Action Law.

Collective writs of mandamus may be filed by political parties with representatives in Parliament/Congress, trade unions or professional associations, or associations with institutional purposes related to the subject matter of the claims and which have been formally incorporated one year prior to the filing of the writ (Article 21 of Law 12016/2009).

Note that the parties who have standing to file collective actions are not the holders of the transindividual rights underlying the claims – they plead in their own name, but on behalf of rights that pertain to others. Under Brazilian law, this is referred to as extraordinary standing (as opposed to ordinary standing, in which a party claims protection of rights that are their own).

In cases pertaining to diffuse and/or collective rights, there is no need to define the members of the class because the right is indivisible by definition. There will be no amounts in compensation granted to each individual member of the class. All members of the class are automatically included, but the distinction between opt-in and opt-out does not adequately apply to these cases, as the individuals cannot bring individual claims related to diffuse or collective rights.

In cases involving homogeneous individual rights, Brazilian collective actions operate on an opt-out basis. Judgments will bind all members of the class unless they automatically exclude themselves by filing an individual action. There is no lis pendens between a collective action and individual actions relating to the same harmful acts, but an individual who has filed an individual action may choose to be bound by the collective action by staying their action.

Brazilian courts have conduct of the proceedings. Judges have case management powers and may order a claimant to correct or complement their pleadings before service, require the production of evidence in their own initiative, and appoint their own experts. The courts may grant preliminary relief upon the parties’ request.

Courts may reverse the burden of proof in environmental or consumer law cases but may also use their general power to reverse the burden of proof granted by the Civil Procedure Code in other cases. This reversal protects victims in vulnerable situations by shifting the burden to the defendants, who must prove they did not cause harm. 

There is no general duty to disclose documents under Brazilian law. Courts may order a party to produce specific documents in their own initiative or upon an opposing party’s request. The requests must be specific and the documents must be directly relevant to the claims. The court has discretion in granting document production requests and may also order production from third parties (but always for specific documents).

Under the Attorneys Statute (Law No. 8096/1994), communications between attorneys and clients are privileged. The attorney–client privilege extends to all communications, regardless of any specific warnings or requests regarding confidentiality.

Courts can grant injunctive relief in collective actions and often do so, as reparation is preferred to compensation in many cases involving collective and diffuse rights. Injunctions can be enforced through daily fines (imposed for each day of non-compliance), search and seizure, freezing of assets and accounts, and criminal contempt proceedings (in extreme cases). Reparation may not be possible, in which case compensation will be directed to public funds (see Section 3.10, below).

Brazilian courts should promote settlement and refer matters to mediation when appropriate. Collective actions may be settled through consent agreements known as TACs (CPA Law, Article 5, paragraph 6). TACs can be executed prior to the filing of a collective action in cases where the Public Prosecutor’s Office has conducted administrative investigations.

Settlement agreements concerning collective actions can be executed before the courts or not (judicial or extrajudicial agreements) but must be ratified by the courts in order to be enforceable. The other co-legitimate parties may ask the court to intervene if they did not participate in the agreement, and may ask the court not to ratify it, to partially ratify it, or to modify some of its terms, in order to ensure adequate protection of transindividual rights. Unlike the ratification of settlement agreements concerning individual rights, the ratification of transindividual rights settlements necessarily involves the court’s analysis of the agreement’s merits. The court may reject an agreement for multiple reasons, such as if its terms are insufficient or inadequate to remedy violations, if they are contrary to public interest, or if the affected parties have not been properly notified of the agreement. If the Public Prosecutor’s Office is not a party to the agreement, it must also intervene before the settlement can be ratified. Compliance with a settlement agreement may require court supervision.

Compensation may be determined through individual judicial enforcement actions in collective actions involving homogeneous individual rights (see Section 3.11, below). In cases where such enforcement is not possible (e.g., if amounts are unclaimed or the amounts granted are very low), the CPA allows for a fluid recovery mechanism: the amounts are transferred to public funds and directed towards projects benefiting affected communities.

If compensation is granted in cases involving diffuse and collective rights, all amounts are transferred to public funds and directed to projects and initiatives that advance the interests of the affected communities. The CPA Law refers to the FDD (the Defense of Diffuse Rights Fund), connected to the Ministry of Justice, but there are also state and municipal funds, and funds connected to specific communities, such as Indigenous and Quilombola communities.

The effects of judgments pertaining to collective actions depend on the type of collective right and the outcome of the case. For diffuse rights, the judgment will bind all, as it will have an erga omnes effect. For collective rights, the judgment will bind all members of the group, category or class. In both cases, if the claims are dismissed for lack of evidence, other co-legitimate parties may file the same collective action with new evidence. In any event, judgments pertaining to diffuse and collective rights shall not jeopardize the individual interests and rights of the affected individuals.

For homogeneous individual rights, a positive outcome will benefit all affected individuals, who may file individual enforcement actions to receive compensation. If the claim is dismissed (for any reason), individuals who were not parties and did not intervene in the case are not bound by the judgment and may file individual claims. Finally, the CDC also establishes that the findings of cases involving diffuse and/or collective rights benefit individuals, who may proceed to quantify and enforce their individual claims.  

In cases involving homogeneous individual rights, the court will most likely issue a generic sentence determining the defendant’s liability (if at all possible, the court will issue a judgment that quantifies compensation for all individuals). The damages of each affected individual are then to be quantified and enforced in separate liquidation proceedings. As mentioned above in Section 3.8, injunctive relief may be enforced through daily fines, search and seizure, freezing of assets and accounts, and criminal contempt proceedings.

For the past 20 years, bills putting forward different versions of Collective Procedure Codes have been discussed amongst scholars and introduced in Congress. The bills aim to address ambiguities and solve issues found in the current regime, but the proposals face resistance from various stakeholders. The CNJ and the National Council of the Prosecutor’s Office (CNMP) have been seeking to improve communication and coordination between different courts. In 2011, the two councils created a National Registry for Collective Actions to better monitor collective actions filed across the country and address issues that may arise when multiple collective actions on the same facts are filed in different courts and parts of the country. The registry has become more accurate with every passing year.