ADI 7916 (General Law on Environmental Licensing)

In December, 2025, the political party Rede Sustentabilidade and the National Association of Municipal Environmental Agencies (ANAMMA) filed a Direct Action of Unconstitutionality (ADI) with a request for a precautionary measure to challenge provisions of Federal Law 15.190/2025 (General Law on Environmental Licensing – LGLA). The plaintiffs allege its formal and material unconstitutionality, including violations of international commitments, such as the Paris Agreement. Regarding formal unconstitutionality, it is pointed out that the LGLA, through ordinary law, legislates on matters constitutionally reserved for complementary law and already regulated in Complementary Law 140/2011. Regarding material unconstitutionality, several violations of a series of constitutional environmental norms and principles are cited, such as the prohibition of insufficient protection, prevention and precaution, prohibition of environmental regression, polluter-pays principle, among others. Key changes include the creation of the Adhesion and Commitment License (LAC), which authorizes self-declaration licensing outside of inspection for medium-impact activities; the Special Environmental License (LAE), which simplifies licensing for projects of "relevant public and social interest"—an arbitrary criterion with unrestricted scope; and the decoupling of municipal urban planning from the licensing process. Also noteworthy is the reversal of the preventive logic within licensing, through the creation of "positive lists" where activities not included would be exempt from licensing, and the massive exemption from licensing for agricultural activities (the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases in Brazil), pre-existing infrastructure works, and water and sewage treatment plants. It emphasizes the limitation on the inclusion of conditions in environmental licenses, the exclusion of the mandatory inclusion of indirect impacts in the EIA/RIMA (Environmental Impact Assessment/Environmental Impact Report), and changes in the environmental liability regime promoted by the General Environmental Law: it stipulates that corrective licensing extinguishes the punishability of the crime of operating without a license, in addition to exempting financiers from civil liability for environmental damages. It also addresses the weakening of protection for indigenous and quilombola peoples insofar as the LGLA (General Environmental Law) restricts the mandatory intervention of their protective bodies only to cases where their lands are formally demarcated or titled, and the weakening of protection for Conservation Units and the Atlantic Forest. Finally, it points out as materially unconstitutional the stipulation of absolute prevalence of the licensing body in the exercise of environmental police power, including over perpetrators of infractions and other instruments adopted by other environmental bodies of other federative entities, and the establishment of insufficient deadlines for the analysis of licensing processes. The petitioner requests, as a precautionary measure, the suspension of the effectiveness of all provisions of the LGLA challenged in the initial petition. On the merits, the petitioner requests the granting of the precautionary measure, the declaration of unconstitutionality of the articles indicated in the initial petition and, subsidiarily, the interpretation in accordance with the Constitution of article 14, §§ 1, 2 and 5, and articles 43, 44 and 65 of the LGLA.