The Brazilian Judge Who Would Be King Faces an American Reckoning

There is an old maxim that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In the case of Alexandre de Moraes, Justice of Brazil’s Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), the phrase feels less like a cautionary adage and more like a clinical diagnosis. What began as a seemingly standard judicial appointment has curdled into something far more corrosive: an extraterritorial assault on civil liberties, waged by a man who now finds himself compelled to explain his actions before a US court. The lawsuit filed by Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) and Rumble against Moraes has not only survived initial scrutiny, it has drawn the Brazilian justice into an unprecedented legal confrontation with American constitutional protections. The man who silenced critics in Brazil is now being forced to speak.

Moraes's rise to power began with a suspicious appointment. In 2017, Brazil was in the midst of the explosive Operation Car Wash (Lava Jato) corruption investigation, which implicated some of the nation’s most powerful political and business figures. Justice Teori Zavascki, who had been overseeing the case, died suddenly in a plane crash, a death that many found too convenient given the political stakes. With Zavascki gone, then-President Michel Temer, himself a subject of corruption investigations, quickly appointed Moraes, his former justice minister, to the STF, ensuring that someone loyal to the political establishment, rather than an impartial jurist, would have a decisive role in shaping the Court’s direction.

Moraes had never served as a judge before being elevated to the STF. His appointment was political, not judicial. His ties to the Temer administration and the broader Brazilian political elite raised immediate concerns that he was being installed not to uphold the rule of law, but to protect those in power. The Rumble lawsuit contends that Moraes was chosen for precisely this reason: to act as a guardian for the establishment, ensuring that the STF could serve as a shield against future corruption investigations rather than an impartial enforcer of justice.

The original suit, filed in February 2025, alleges that Moraes issued secretive orders requiring the takedown of content and suspension of users on Rumble, a US-based platform. These orders, framed as judicial decrees combating misinformation, were in fact blunt instruments of political suppression. Rumble and TMTG argue that complying with Moraes’s edicts would not only violate the First Amendment, but also undermine the integrity of their business operations in the United States. A federal judge agreed in part. In late February 2025, the court ruled that Moraes's orders were unenforceable in the US, citing the lack of proper service under international law and the inapplicability of foreign censorship on American soil. But the case did not end there.

In June 2025, a new summons was issued, compelling Moraes to respond to the allegations directly. This is no longer a hypothetical debate about jurisdiction. It is now an active legal proceeding with global stakes. The plaintiffs seek not just a declaration of unenforceability, but also damages for what they argue are substantial harms: reputational injury, loss of user trust, and violations of constitutional law. Moraes, the once-untouchable arbiter of digital discourse in Brazil, now stands as a defendant before a judiciary with no patience for secrecy, no tolerance for overreach, and no appetite for kings.

The core of the case is constitutional. Moraes is accused of attempting to enforce Brazilian speech laws in the United States, using the threat of criminal and financial penalties to compel compliance. His orders, often sealed and undisclosed to the public, demanded the removal of accounts belonging to political dissidents, many of whom had fled to the US seeking the protection of its more liberal speech regime. One such dissident, described in the lawsuit as "Political Dissident A," remains in the US after a rejected extradition request. Moraes’s response? Pressure American companies to silence him anyway.

This strategy is not merely coercive, it is contemptuous. It treats American sovereignty as an inconvenience to be bypassed and the Constitution as a mere obstacle to be overridden. Were Moraes a private actor, this would be called harassment. But as a judge, his use of state authority transforms it into something more sinister: transnational judicial authoritarianism.

Indeed, Moraes's judicial reach has grown so expansive it now operates with the same disregard for borders that characterizes autocratic regimes. The irony is striking. In the name of defending democracy, Moraes has emulated its enemies. His tools, censorship, sealed orders, gag decrees, political arrests, are indistinguishable from those wielded by illiberal strongmen.

And yet, Moraes has not retreated. Since March 2025, he has escalated. In June, Brazil's Supreme Court, with Moraes playing a central role, ruled that Article 19 of the 2014 Internet Bill of Rights was partially unconstitutional. This effectively expanded platform liability, making social media companies responsible for user content in ways that mirror the very extraterritorial overreach now under litigation in the US. The message is clear: Moraes sees platforms as extensions of the state’s regulatory power, not as neutral venues for discourse.

In the same month, Moraes ordered the preventive arrest of Marcelo Costa Camara, a former advisor to Jair Bolsonaro, for allegedly violating a court-imposed gag order related to ongoing investigations. Camara’s lawyer disclosed details from a confidential deposition, and Moraes, acting as judge and enforcer, responded with arrest. There was no jury, no public hearing, no deliberation, just an order.

This pattern recurs with numbing regularity. Moraes does not litigate, he commands. He does not persuade, he punishes. When Elon Musk refused to comply with Moraes’s takedown demands on X, the judge threatened Musk’s companies, including Starlink, with retaliatory measures. When Meta declined to fully implement Moraes’s mandates, Brazilian lawmakers allied with Moraes proposed legislation to criminalize noncompliance. The judiciary, under his direction, behaves not as an interpreter of law, but as an instrument of ideological enforcement.

What remains extraordinary is that these actions have now prompted international blowback. US courts, long reluctant to entangle themselves in foreign political matters, have nevertheless taken the Moraes lawsuit seriously. This is not due to diplomatic antagonism, but because the constitutional questions are both urgent and foundational. If a foreign judge can demand that American companies suppress protected speech, and if those companies face penalties for refusing, then the First Amendment ceases to function. It becomes conditional on foreign preferences. That is not a world any American court should accept.

Nor is it a theoretical threat. Moraes has already sought to extend his authority through Brazilian criminal law, compelling US-based companies to appoint representatives in Brazil under threat of prosecution. The logic is circular: install a proxy within reach, then use that proxy to domesticate enforcement. This is not merely jurisdictional creep. It is an attempt to colonize the digital commons.

The suit by TMTG and Rumble thus presents a timely challenge to an increasingly popular trend among transnational elites: the idea that speech must be managed, not protected, and that judicial discretion should override legal restraint. Moraes is a symptom of this ideology, not its sole practitioner. But he is its most audacious exemplar, and now, he has been summoned to account.

Whether the case results in financial damages or merely a symbolic rebuke, its implications are enormous. If the US courts affirm that foreign judicial orders aimed at curbing American speech are unenforceable, it will establish a precedent for defending the constitutional perimeter of the digital domain. If they go further and hold such conduct as legally actionable, it could deter future incursions. Moraes is not just on trial. So is the principle of speech without borders.

It is often said that democracy dies in darkness. But the better metaphor in this case may be that tyranny dies in sunlight. Moraes has operated for years in the shadows of judicial privilege and political immunity. Now he is being forced to emerge, to explain, to defend, and, perhaps, to lose.

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