Background
Reginaldo Bispo das Merces Neto sat the psychological-evaluation phase of the 2021 federal competitive examination for the position of Federal Road Police Officer (Policial Rodoviário Federal), administered by CEBRASPE under Notice No. 1/2021. He was found psychologically unfit and eliminated. He then sued CEBRASPE and the Federal Government seeking to annul that result, alleging that the psychological test relied on subjective, non-disclosed criteria in violation of constitutional guarantees of due process and adversarial procedure (art. 5, LV, of the Federal Constitution), and requesting the right to retake the test under objective standards and to continue to the remaining exam phases. The trial court dismissed the claim, but the Federal Regional Court of the First Region (TRF1) reversed, declared the elimination unlawful, ordered him admitted to further stages, and — after he was later retested and found fit — also ordered his appointment if ranked accordingly. In setting the case value (valor da causa) for purposes of calculating attorney’s fees, the TRF1 applied art. 292, § 2º of the Code of Civil Procedure (CPC), fixing it at R$ 118,798.56, equivalent to one year of the salary for the contested position.
CEBRASPE filed a Special Appeal (Recurso Especial) to the STJ, arguing that the lawsuit addressed only the legality of a single exam phase — the psychological test — without any immediate economic benefit: even a favorable ruling would merely allow the candidate to continue to subsequent phases, with no guarantee of ultimate appointment or salary. CEBRASPE contended that the annual-salary formula of art. 292, § 2º CPC is inapplicable where no economic benefit is directly and immediately at stake, and that the case value should instead reflect the non-pecuniary nature of the claim. It also pointed to a conflicting line of TRF1 decisions holding that challenges to public-exam results carry no immediate economic content and therefore need not be valued by reference to the position’s remuneration.
Acknowledging that at least 201 cases raising the identical question were already pending in the TRF1 alone — of which 27 were selected as representative — and that divergent judicial outcomes on this procedural point were generating systemic inconsistency, the reporting Minister Sérgio Kukina proposed that the STJ resolve the matter through the binding repetitive-appeals mechanism (recursos repetitivos).
The Court’s Holding
The First Section, voting unanimously on 22 June 2026, did not resolve the substantive merits of the case-value dispute at this stage. Instead, it formally designated REsp 2253100 as the leading representative case (recurso representativo da controvérsia) for the following disputed legal thesis: “To define whether, in actions that discuss only the regularity of a phase of a public competitive examination, without immediate economic benefit, the criterion of art. 292, § 2º of the CPC applies or not for determining the case value.” This designation triggers the repetitive-appeals procedure governed by arts. 987 and 1,037 of the CPC and arts. 256-E and 257-C of the STJ’s Internal Rules (RISTJ).
As a direct consequence of the designation, the Court ordered the immediate suspension of all special appeals and interlocutory appeals to special appeals — whether pending in second-instance courts or already at the STJ — that concern the same legal question. The suspension will remain in place until the First Section issues its binding ruling on the thesis. Additionally, the Court directed notice of the designation to be sent to all STJ Ministers and to the Presidents of all Federal Regional Courts and State Courts of Justice, and referred the case file to the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic (Ministério Público Federal) for a written opinion within fifteen days before the matter is scheduled for final argument.
The Court did not express any preliminary view on whether art. 292, § 2º CPC should or should not apply to single-phase public-exam challenges. The sole operative decision is the procedural one: to consolidate resolution of this recurring controversy through a single binding precedent.
Key Takeaways
- The STJ has opened a binding-precedent proceeding to resolve a nationwide split: courts disagree on whether lawsuits contesting only one phase of a public competitive examination — with no immediate monetary relief sought — must have their case value set by reference to the position’s annual salary under art. 292, § 2º CPC, or whether a nominal/fiscal value is appropriate because no immediate economic benefit is in play.
- All special appeals pending before the STJ or in any Brazilian appellate court that raise this same issue are now formally suspended until the First Section issues its binding ruling.
- The underlying dispute arose from a Federal Road Police psychological exam that was found to have used impermissibly subjective and non-transparent criteria, reinforcing existing precedent that psychotechnical evaluations in public exams must rely on objective, disclosed standards — but that substantive finding is not part of the repetitive-thesis proceeding.
- The scale of the problem is significant: the TRF1 alone identified 201 cases presenting the identical procedural question, illustrating how attorney’s-fee calculations in public-exam litigation may shift substantially depending on how the STJ ultimately rules.
Why It Matters
The case-value rule matters far beyond the individual litigants because in Brazilian civil procedure the valor da causa is the base for calculating attorney’s fees payable to the winning side under art. 85 of the CPC. If the STJ ultimately holds that art. 292, § 2º CPC applies — pegging the case value to the position’s annual salary — successful plaintiffs in public-exam litigation will recover substantially higher fees, and unsuccessful ones will owe correspondingly more. Conversely, if the Court holds that such suits carry no immediate economic content and should be valued at a nominal or fiscal amount, attorney’s fees in this entire category of cases will be dramatically lower. The answer will affect hundreds of pending cases and set the financial stakes for future litigation challenging the legality of competitive-examination phases throughout Brazil’s federal and state court systems.
More broadly, the designation reflects the STJ’s role as the ultimate arbiter of federal procedural law under the 2015 CPC’s precedent-stabilization framework. By channeling an empirically documented split — with divergent rulings already identified within the same regional court — into a single binding decision, the Court aims to restore predictability for litigants, public agencies, and examining bodies such as CEBRASPE that routinely face challenges to their selection processes.