When a Florida woman tweeted a criticism of Brazil’s president and legal system, she likely didn’t think it would lead to Brazil’s head judge issuing a warrant for her arrest.
Flávia Magalhães, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Brazil, has the right to speak freely in the United States under the First Amendment. But whether Brazil — and other foreign nations — will respect Americans’ constitutional rights is to be determined.
Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes — whose previous rulings include suspensions of social media platforms X and Rumble, which provides the technology backbone for Truth Social — issued the warrant for the American’s arrest. He said he issued it “to guarantee public order.”
But the arrest warrant prompts larger questions about sovereignty, precedent and free speech: Do Americans’ First Amendment rights apply to the international stage? Are citizens protected when they criticize countries from their home turf?
“The U.S. government should take all necessary steps to protect its citizens, including Flavia Magalhães, from this type of judicial abuse,” Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told Straight Arrow News. “That means not cooperating in any way with Brazilian judicial and law enforcement authorities and taking steps to ensure they do not try to enforce this arrest warrant in the U.S. or through Interpol.”
“No foreign country has the right to prosecute an American citizen, naturalized or not, for criticizing that foreign government, particularly not a government like Brazil that does not respect basic human rights such as the ability to speak freely and criticize government officials,” von Spakovsky added.
Foreign nations’ free speech clash
While foreign nations rarely try to arrest Americans for their public statements, nations such as Brazil, Turkey, Russia and Thailand have attempted to bring criminal cases against U.S. citizens.
Interpol, the world’s largest international police organization, has sometimes been used to try and track down dissidents abroad through alerts known as Red Notices.
U.S. courts have consistently rebuked extradition requests from foreign nations. These requests conflict with the U.S. Constitution and its First Amendment. But that hasn’t necessarily stopped Americans from being sued in foreign courts for legal issues related to freedom of speech.
‘Libel tourism’
When other nations bring libel suits in foreign jurisdictions, it can be to benefit from local libel laws, a practice dubbed “libel tourism.”
Such may have been the case when Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz sued American author Rachel Ehrenfeld in the United Kingdom for allegedly slandering him in her book, “Funding Evil,” in which she connected him to financing terrorism. A British court issued a judgment against Ehrenfeld, but the U.S. refused to enforce it.
In response to libel tourism, the U.S. enacted a law called the Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage Act — the SPEECH Act.
The SPEECH Act
The statute — passed unanimously by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010 — prohibits any domestic court from “recognizing or enforcing a foreign judgment for defamation.”
The law’s adoption was seen as a victory for many American authors and publishers, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press wrote in 2010.
“Previously, merely purchasing a book or reading an article on the Internet in another country was enough to expose some writers to lawsuits in foreign countries,” the committee wrote.
Foreign governments, however, still pursue orders and arrest warrants like the one Brazil issued for Magalhães last week.
Brazil and America’s showdown
Magalhães used her X account in 2022 to criticize Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Justice de Moraes for censorship. Her post broke no U.S. law and violated no platform rules.
Three years later, she continued to speak out, despite the arrest warrant.
“I’m a victim of this tyrant,” Magalhães wrote on X in April. “I am Brazilian and an American citizen since 2012. He suspended my Twitter account in 2023 because of an opinion I expressed. I have lived in the United States for 23 years. Everything I say, think and write is from American soil. He thought it was not enough, suspended my Brazilian passport and even issued an arrest warrant. I can no longer return to Brazil to visit my family. ALL THIS BECAUSE OF AN OPINION ON X.”
The Brazil Federal Supreme Court did not respond to SAN’s request for comment.
In May, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a letter to de Moraes saying Brazil’s judicial order has no validity in the U.S.
Brazil has been waging an “unlawful censorship campaign against U.S. persons on U.S. soil,” a U.S. Department of Treasury press release stated.
In July, the State Department revoked visas for de Moraes and members of his family. The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned de Moraes, for authorizing “arbitrary pre-trial detentions and suppressing freedom of expression,” the press release issued July 30 continued.
“De Moraes is responsible for an oppressive campaign of censorship, arbitrary detentions that violate human rights, and politicized prosecutions—including against former President Jair Bolsonaro,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said in the release. “Today’s action makes clear that Treasury will continue to hold accountable those who threaten U.S. interests and the freedoms of our citizens. “
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