Articles | Postado no dia: 17 August, 2026
Special Appeal Gets a Relevance Filter: What Changes with Law No. 15,484/2026
New relevance filter requires a dedicated section in special appeals starting September 2026
The special appeal now has another requirement for admissibility. Published on August 4, 2026, Law No. 15,484/2026 regulates the relevance requirement for infra-constitutional federal law issues.
This requirement was written into the legal system by Constitutional Amendment No. 125/2022, which added paragraph 2 to Article 105 of the Constitution, establishing the relevance requirement for infra-constitutional federal matters raised through a special appeal. Similar to what happened with general repercussion (repercussão geral) for extraordinary appeals, this created a relevance requirement for special appeals to be admitted. Still, actually enforcing this requirement took a while, since there was no legal regulation in place.
Law No. 15,484/2026 fills that gap by adding Article 1,035-A to the Code of Civil Procedure. Special appeals will now need to involve a question that’s relevant from an economic, political, social, or legal standpoint, one that goes beyond the individual interests of the parties involved.
From now on, when drafting a special appeal, the attorney must include a specific section demonstrating this relevance, or the appeal simply won’t be considered. This section needs to explain why the federal issue at hand matters and what impact it has beyond the parties involved, whether that impact is already happening or just likely to happen. The explanation can be shorter in cases of presumed relevance, which are listed in paragraph 3 of Article 105 of the Constitution.
Once relevance is recognized, the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) can suspend proceedings on the same issue nationwide while the case is being decided. The outcome of that judgment then becomes part of the binding precedents set out in the Code of Civil Procedure.
This new requirement takes effect on September 3, 2026, when Law No. 15,484/2026 comes into force.
Author: Giuliano Fernandes
