A federal judge in Brasília has temporarily suspended central parts of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s decree reshaping Brazil’s Worker Food Program, delivering a limited but significant win to meal- and food-voucher operators represented by the Brazilian Association of Employee-Benefit Companies.

The ruling pauses, for the association’s members, the requirement that payment arrangements be opened for operators serving more than 500,000 workers, caps on merchant fees and the 15-day deadline for transferring funds to businesses. It also bars the federal government and Labor Ministry from sanctioning those firms under the suspended provisions while the case proceeds.¹

The industry’s case, emphasized by the right-leaning account, is that the decree went beyond regulation and effectively created obligations Congress had not put into the 1976 law governing the program. Operators warned that capped fees and faster payments could strain their finances; a technical study cited in the case said some companies could lose up to 57% of revenue if forced to pay restaurants before receiving funds from clients.¹

The left-leaning account likewise reports that Judge Frederico Viana found indications the decree may have introduced new legal constraints without statutory backing. He described the measure as “direct price-setting in private relationships” without explicit authorization and warned that altered contract terms could produce defaults and an “operational collapse” among small and medium-sized benefit providers.²

But the accounts differ in emphasis. The industry-focused account stresses the protection of existing commercial terms, while the other situates the ruling against the government’s consumer- and competition-focused aims: reducing merchants’ costs, expanding card acceptance and making vouchers easier for workers to use.²

Not all of the reform was halted. Interoperability — allowing cards from different operators to work across a broader merchant network — took effect nationally and remains in force. The suspended provisions will remain unresolved until a final judicial decision.