The Senate Constitution and Justice Committee (CCJ) postponed the vote on the Proposed Amendment to the Constitution (PEC) that prohibits the use of compulsory retirement as disciplinary punishment and authorizes the loss of office in cases of serious infraction. The text, authored by the current Federal Supreme Court (STF) minister Flávio Dino, should be analyzed by the collegiate on April 8, following a request for a public hearing presented by senator Sergio Moro (União-PR).
Reported by Senator Eliziane Gama (PSD-MA), the proposal alters provisions of the Constitution to allow the application of loss of office — including lifetime functions — to magistrates, members of the Public Ministry and military personnel. The measure seeks to bring the disciplinary regime of these careers closer to that already applied to public servants in general.
In the opinion presented, the rapporteur argues that the change corrects historical distortions and addresses the perception of impunity associated with compulsory retirement, which maintains the payment of remuneration to the punished agent. According to her, the proposal reinforces the principle of administrative morality and contributes to increasing the population’s trust in institutions.
The text also provides that the loss of position may be applied after an administrative process, with a guarantee of contradiction and full defense, without the need, in certain cases, for a prior judicial decision. For Eliziane, the current model creates a mismatch between the seriousness of the conduct and the sanction actually applied.
The PEC was presented by Dino while still in the Senate and gained momentum after the minister stated, in a recent decision in the STF, that compulsory retirement as a punishment lost constitutional support after the 2019 Pension Reform. In justifying the proposal, he maintains that the sanction distorts the pension nature of the institute and can result, in practice, in a financial benefit to the punished agent.
The opinion also mentions cases judged by the National Council of Justice (CNJ) in which magistrates were punished with compulsory retirement even in the face of serious accusations, which reignited the debate about the adequacy of the penalties. The assessment is that the new rule tends to align disciplinary treatment in the public service and eliminate differences between careers.
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If approved by the CCJ and later by the Senate plenary, the proposal will still need to pass through the Chamber of Deputies before being enacted.
STF
The advancement of the proposal comes in the wake of a recent decision by STF minister Flávio Dino, who considered the application of compulsory retirement as a disciplinary sanction to be incompatible with the Constitution. When analyzing the topic, Dino stated that, after the 2019 Social Security Reform, there was no longer a constitutional basis for this type of punishment, especially because it was a benefit of a social security nature.
In the decision, the minister also highlighted that the measure contradicts the principle of administrative morality by allowing punished agents to continue receiving remuneration. The understanding reinforced, among parliamentarians, the assessment of convergence between the Judiciary and Congress on the need to toughen punishments in cases of serious infractions, although the debate must still be deepened in the public hearing requested before the vote in the CCJ.
