## Facts

- A trade association representing private delivery and courier companies challenged a federal statute governing postal services that grants the Union an exclusive postal privilege, exercised by the state-owned postal enterprise.
- The challenge targeted the statute’s reservation of certain correspondence-related services to the public postal operator and the statute’s sanctions for private actors deemed to violate that privilege.
- The association argued that the exclusivity regime conflicted with constitutional principles of free enterprise and free competition.
- The postal enterprise and the Union defended the exclusivity regime as constitutionally grounded in the Union’s exclusive responsibility for postal services.
- The court conducted plenary consideration over multiple sessions and ultimately rendered final judgment in 2009.

## Issues

1. Whether postal services are a public service subject to exclusive public provision, or an economic activity subject to free enterprise and competition.
2. Whether the statute’s exclusive postal privilege violates constitutional principles of free enterprise, free competition, and related limits on state participation in the economy.
3. Whether statutory sanctions for “violation of the postal privilege” are constitutional as written, or require narrowing to avoid overbreadth.

## Decision

- The court denied the claim and upheld the constitutionality of the core exclusive postal privilege.
- The court held that postal services constitute a public service rather than an economic activity in the strict sense.
- The court concluded that constitutional provisions favoring free initiative and free competition were not violated by exclusivity in an area constitutionally assigned to the Union on an exclusive basis.
- The court adopted a constitution-conforming interpretation of the sanctions provision, limiting its application to violations involving the core reserved postal services specified in the statute (i.e., correspondence-type activities), rather than all delivery or logistics services.

## Legal Principles

- Postal service is a public service; it is not an economic activity in the strict sense for purposes of constitutional economic-liberty analysis.
- Where the constitution assigns a service to the Union on an exclusive basis, a statutory exclusivity regime implementing that assignment is generally compatible with constitutional commitments to free initiative and competition.
- “Monopoly” (in the sense of exclusion in competitive economic markets) is analytically distinct from “exclusive provision” of a public service; the latter may operate as a public-service privilege.
- Penal or administrative sanctions aimed at protecting an exclusive public-service regime must be confined to the legally reserved core activities; sanctions cannot be applied expansively to non-reserved delivery or mercantile logistics activities.

## Conclusion

The court sustained the Union’s exclusive postal privilege as a constitutionally authorized public-service exclusivity, while narrowing the statute’s sanctions to apply only to conduct that intrudes on the core reserved correspondence services.


Associação Brasileira das Empresas de Distribuição v. Empresa Brasileira de Correios e Telégrafos (Arguição de Descumprimento de Preceito Fundamental No. 46) (Braz. S. Ct. 2009)