The Federal Public Defender’s Office (DPU) sent this Wednesday (21) a recommendation to the ministries of Racial Equality and Management and Innovation in Public Services (MGI) to ensure compliance with the legislation on racial quotas in federal government public tenders.
The body recommended that the public administration guarantees compliance with the 20% quota for black candidates and prevents the so-called splitting of vacancies from continuing – when a body divides what would be the total vacancies reserved for black candidates and divides it between the positions offered, generally in the form of a draw.
The practice means that black candidates approved within the quota end up not being approved, if the position for which they chose to compete was not included in the draw with vacancies for black candidates. As a result, the number of vacancies filled with candidates approved as quota holders was also reduced, from 12 to six.
According to the DPU, this is what happened in the last competition for researcher and technologist at the National Institute for Amazonian Research (Inpa), which was approved last year. The notice, released in 2023, provided for the reservation of 20% of the 63 vacancies for black candidates, but only six were approved.
This occurred because, even before the tests, the institute randomly selected vacancies among the specialties provided for in the notice. In this way, the black candidate who switched to a specialty not covered by racial quota vacancies ended up not being approved.
Entities defending racial rights have accused the practice for years as a way of circumventing racial quotas. Last year, the Rede Sustentabilidade party sued the Federal Supreme Court (STF) to declare the division of vacancies for racial quotas as unconstitutional, among other ways of circumventing legislation.
According to the legend, the practice would be “generalized” by the federal public administration, especially in universities, having even been applied by bodies that participated in the first Unified National Competition (CNU).
In the letter sent to the government, the DPU seeks a faster administrative solution, recommending that the ministries involved issue joint normative guidance to ban the practice of splitting vacancies from the federal public administration.
The regulations must state that “the division of reserved places through a prior draw or any other mechanism that reduces the effectiveness of the 20% reserve established in Law 12,990/2014 and Law 15,142/2025 is prohibited”, recommends the DPU.
The body also recommends that the practice of “double registration” be prohibited.that is, when the notice includes the same candidate as a candidate for open and reserved vacancies.
Among other justifications, prohibitions must be guaranteed in view of “the persistent underrepresentation of black people in the federal public service, especially in positions with higher qualifications and remuneration”, says the recommendation, which was signed by the DPU’s Ethnic-Racial Policies Working Group.
In 2017, the Supreme Court decided that any practice that undermines the effectiveness of the application of legislation on racial quotas in public tenders is unconstitutional. According to the decision, the reservation of places must be effective and not just symbolic.
THE Brazil Agency got in touch via e-mail with the Ministries of Racial Equality and Management and Innovation, but did not receive feedback on the recommendations made by the DPU nor on the irregularities highlighted in the Inpa competition.
At the time, Inpa justified the splitting of vacancies with a 2023 technical note from MGI which, in one of its provisions, opened up space for the practice. Since then, this technical note has been “overcome”, informed the ministry in a previous statement, by the approval, in 2025, of the new law on racial quotas, which made clear the reservation for the total places in any competition.
