Brazil Readies a Blacklist for Bosses Accused of Firing Lula Voters, Makes Meta Warn Every User

Five days after Brazil's runoff, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's government is building a list of business owners it accuses of punishing workers for their votes, and a labor judge has ordered Meta to put a warning in front of every Brazilian on Facebook, Instagram and Threads.

The order came Thursday night from Judge Bruno José Perusso of São Paulo's 77th Labor Court. He gave Meta 24 hours to pull 14 posts, at a fine of 50,000 reais a day for every link left up, the court announced. Within 72 hours, Meta must also run a notice or banner for all its Brazilian users saying Brazilian law bans political discrimination and "electoral harassment" at work, or pay 200,000 reais.

That is a court telling an American company what to put in front of every Brazilian on three of its apps. And it is only one piece of a crackdown Lula's labor minister rolled out the day before.

What the posts said

The case was brought by Brazil's labor prosecutors, the Ministério Público do Trabalho (MPT). Their suit, filed the same day, asks Meta for 50 million reais in "collective moral damages." It says the posts urged bosses to comb through employees' social media, track how they voted, fire them and mock them in public.

The lawsuit's lead example, described by UOL columnist Leonardo Sakamoto, who obtained it, came from a verified Instagram account with 3.8 million followers. One post told business owners to check whether a worker "fez o L" (flashed the L hand sign Lula voters use) with the caption "Fez o L? Manda embora": made the L? Fire them. Four posts from that account had more than 2 million likes, the suit says. Another post pushed the slogan "the right hires the right and the left hires the left."

Nobody should lose a paycheck over a ballot, and plenty of conservatives would say the same. Firing someone only for a vote is already illegal in Brazil under its constitution and a 1995 anti-discrimination law. The question is what the state does next, and how far it reaches.

How far the government wants to reach

On Oct. 28 the Labor Ministry announced a joint push with labor prosecutors, the solicitor general's office (AGU), the Superior Labor Court (TST), election prosecutors and the Justice Ministry, in the ministry's own release. Its plan includes moves "to remove from the internet sites, publications and social media content" it says promote political persecution, starting with notices to platforms "such as Google and Meta."

Labor Minister Luiz Marinho also announced "the creation of a list of employers" involved in political discrimination and electoral harassment, plus steps to cut off their credit. He told reporters it would be modeled on Brazil's "dirty list" of employers caught using slave labor, CNN Brasil reported. The 1995 law, a federal labor court noted, allows a ban on "obtaining loans or financing from official financial institutions."

Marinho was blunt about who he blames. "This is the refusal of some business owners who do not accept the natural result of the ballot box," he said, in our translation of the ministry's release.

The AGU's labor chief, Lívia Andrade, said the government will take legal action against big tech companies and social media platforms. The Justice Ministry's No. 2, Ademar Borges, said cases are already under investigation: "Whoever breaks the law will be held accountable."

The judges who will hear the cases are already talking

The head of the Superior Labor Court, Luiz Philippe Vieira de Mello Filho, spoke at the Oct. 28 announcement at the Labor Ministry. "The economic risk they are taking on is very great," he said of employers, per the ministry.

At a court session the next day he went further, Metrópoles reported: the consequences for those "irresponsibly" continuing "will be very drastic, including restrictions on company financing, with the possible creation of a dirty list." He called those involved "a deluded minority" misled by social media. He has also told regional courts to keep judges on call through Dec. 18 and to put these cases first, the legal site Migalhas reported.

In plain terms, the top judge of the court system that will decide these cases has already described the defendants and the punishment.

What the judge said no to

Prosecutors wanted much more than they got. They asked for fines of 500,000 reais per post, for Meta to hunt down and delete "all content of a similar nature" on its own, and for repeat accounts to be frozen for 30 days and then shut down, according to Sakamoto's account of the suit.

Judge Perusso turned down the general monitoring request and the preventive shutdown of accounts, at least for now, the court said. He also set the fine at 50,000 reais a day per link, not the 500,000 reais per post prosecutors wanted. His line on free speech, as quoted by Folha de S.Paulo: "One thing is to express a political opinion or partisan criticism. Another, entirely distinct and illegal, is to use digital platforms to incite the punishment of workers for their ideological choices."

Meta told Folha before the ruling that it would not comment.

Questions officials haven't answered

Labor prosecutors say they logged 3,080 electoral harassment complaints this cycle, 1,147 of them in the 72 hours after the runoff, the court said. Those are complaints, not findings. Officials have not said how many have been checked, how many involve actual firings, or how many were simply angry posts.

Nor have they explained who decides which employers land on the list, what proof it takes, or whether a company can get off it. The 14 posts and the accounts behind them have not been made public. And the government has not said whether its takedown notices to Google and Meta will stop at posts urging firings or reach wider political speech.

All of this comes after an election many Brazilians still question. On runoff day, Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin, Lula's former lawyer, ordered polls kept open two extra hours, and Brazil's election chief said no rule allowed it. Flávio Bolsonaro has refused to concede and is seeking to annul the result. Officials have not explained why the extension was needed. Now the same government is drawing up a list of business owners its labor minister says won't accept the result.

President Trump, asked who legitimately won, would not name Lula. Brazil's government isn't waiting on anyone's answer.