The Bolsonaro deputy (PL-SC) presented a bill that prohibits the reservation of places in public and private universities and filed a representation against the rector of the Federal University of Santa Catarina in reaction to a policy for the inclusion of transgender people.
The two measures are a response to the approval of a former major from the Military Police of Santa Catarina in the medical course at UFSC. Lumen Lohn Freitas, who is trans, was compulsorily retired in 2024 on the grounds of “labour inconsistency and behavioral issues”.
In the representation filed with the Federal Public Ministry of Santa Catarina against the rector Irineu Manoel de Souza, Zanatta criticizes the reservation of 2% of places in undergraduate and postgraduate courses for trans people.
“The adoption of the aforementioned affirmative policy is not limited to internal or experimental effects, but has a concrete impact on the access of thousands of candidates to vacancies in federal public higher education, redistributing opportunities based on criteria not provided for by law and altering competition in selection competitions”, he writes.
The parliamentarian also says that, “by adopting identity criteria not provided for by law, the university ceases to act as an impartial academic institution and starts to function as an agent of normative validation of a certain ideological agenda, using the state structure to anticipate decisions that would be up to the Legislative Branch”.
In the representation, Zanatta requests the establishment of an administrative procedure to determine the legality and constitutionality of the UFSC normative act that established quotas for transgender people, in addition to information on the legal basis adopted for the creation of the policy and the legal basis used to create the vacancy reserve, among other things.
She also filed a project to prohibit the creation of quotas or reservation of places for transgender people in public and private universities and in public examinations for entry into federal, state and municipal public service.
The objective, it states in the justification, is “to ensure that selection processes for higher education institutions and public competitions remain based on criteria of merit, competence and individual capacity, ensuring equal treatment for all candidates, without distinctions based on gender identity”.
Zanatta argues that “reserving specific quotas for ‘transgender’ people can generate conflicts with the principle of equality enshrined in the Federal Constitution, which provides equal treatment for all citizens, regardless of personal characteristics.”
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