The National Council of the Judiciary (CNJ) on Tuesday (11th) approved a resolution increasing the minimum racial quota in public judicial contests from 20% to 30%. The new regulations also include indigenous peoples and quilombolas as beneficiaries and align the agency’s internal regulations with Law No. 15,142/2025, which redefines quota policies in the federal civil service.
This measure applies to tournaments where there are two or more vacancies. In addition to expanding this resolution, the resolution establishes mandatory heterosexual identification procedures and specific criteria for verifying self-declaration of indigenous peoples and quilombolas.
The document defines that 25% of vacant seats will be reserved for Black and Brown people, 3% for Indigenous peoples, and 2% for Quilombolas, for a total of 30% reservations. There is also the possibility of a special notification to distribute up to 10% of vacant seats in various ways between indigenous peoples and quilombolas, with a minimum of 20% respect for black and brown people. This information was shared by CNJ. sheet. This normative law had not yet been made available until the publication of this document.
This norm must specify redistributive rules. If there aren’t enough candidates in one group, the vacancies are passed back to the other groups, first to Indigenous peoples and quilombolas, then to black and brown people, and finally to broader competition.
The sheet In 2023, the law found that only two of the five vacancies previously reserved for Black people in state judicial contests were effectively filled. In federal courts, there was no number of judges approved per quota.
For sociologist Márcio José de Macedo, professor and diversity coordinator at FGV EAESP, this change is positive, but it should not alone change the makeup of the judiciary.
“In general, just establishing a quota policy does not guarantee that it will be successful,” he says. He said competition for judicial positions is intense and exam preparation costs a lot of money, limiting access for black, indigenous and quilombola people.
“The judicial world remains extremely homogeneous in terms of class, racial and gender origins. The majority of judges, prosecutors and judges are made up of white men from the middle and upper classes of Brazilian society,” he says.
For Macedo, the impact of this is that many candidates from historically marginalized groups do not intuitively see this career as a possibility and are excluded from competition even when offered a slot.
He says that while space is necessary, it only works through institutional commitment to identifying and overcoming one’s own structural inequalities.
Councilor Karen Luise de Sousa of the National Public Service Council (CNMP), who previously served as an assistant judge to the CNJ president, submitted a similar proposal on the same Tuesday, raising the minimum reservation for civil service contests to 30% (25% for black and brown people, 3% for indigenous peoples, and 2% for quilombolas).
“We want to include more indigenous and quilombola people, and we want to make it clear that the project of the prosecutor’s office that we are adopting is pluralistic, diverse and a mirror of society,” he said.
In addition to registration, the contest requires transportation and accommodation for candidates during the selection process. These costs often make it impossible for socially disadvantaged groups to participate, he says. Therefore, scholarship programs are essential to enable these candidates to compete on equal terms.
“There is a huge distance between this system and the reality of the country,” he says.
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