Justice André Mendonça of Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE) ordered X to restore, or refrain from blocking, a post by federal lawmaker Erika Hilton after concluding that it fell outside the falsehood targeted by his earlier takedown order.¹

Hilton’s post criticized a 2007 proposal by former congressman Victório Galli Filho to remove Our Lady of Aparecida’s status as Brazil’s patron saint. It identified the bill’s author, said the measure had already been archived, and warned that any effort to revive the debate through presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro or his allies should be watched carefully. Mendonça said the post did not repeat the “notoriously untrue factual core” at issue in the broader case.²

The differing accounts largely agree on that narrow point. Coverage from the right stressed that Hilton had not stated that Flávio Bolsonaro intended to change the saint’s status, while noting that Mendonça upheld the wider effort against posts alleging precisely that.¹ The left-leaning account similarly described the decision as a reversal in Hilton’s individual case, emphasizing that her language referred to an old, shelved proposal rather than asserting an active plan by Flávio.²

Mendonça nevertheless rejected Hilton’s broader challenge to the TSE’s removal system. He said platforms may identify identical or substantially equivalent posts after an initial judicial notice, while the courts retain responsibility for deciding what is unlawful. Requiring individual review of every repost, he argued, could allow misleading material to reach a substantial share of voters before action is completed.¹

The case sits within a continuing judicial dispute over the limits of election-related content moderation. Mendonça’s original order was temporarily set aside by Supreme Court Justice Flávio Dino, then restored by Justice Luiz Fux, according to the right-leaning report.¹