O benefício assistencial à pessoa com deficiência sob o enfoque jurisprudencial: avanços ou retrocessos?

Abstract

The Constitution establishes that people with disabilities that cannot provide their own maintenance nor have it provided by their families have the right to receive a Continuous Cash Benefit (Article 203, V). The constitutional intention of aiding extremely poor individuals with disabilities was restricted by the ordinary legislation regulating this fundamental right, for it has established a very narrow economic standard to define who must receive the Continuous Cash Benefit (Article 20, § 3º, Federal Law n. 8.742/93). Faced with these difficulties, the Judiciary started considering the Article 203, V, of the Brazilian Constitution no longer as a norm of limited effectiveness (programmatic norm), but as a constitutional principle (optimization requirement), even though judges do not state this conclusion expressly. As a result, the Judiciary extended the application of the Article 203, V, of the Brazilian Constitution, using its own standards to assess the claimant’s poverty. Such interpretation is compatible with a social constitutionalism, engaged with the effectiveness of the constitutional provisions, in particular those establishing fundamental rights, despite the fact that there is still room for improvements so as to ensure access to justice and legal certainty. To work with these ideas, we will analyze the theoretical aspects that involve the Continuous Cash Benefit in its classical conception of a norm of limited effectiveness as well as in the sense of a constitutional principle (a definition that is more in accordance with the contemporary constitutionalism). We will also analyze how the Judiciary has altered its understanding in the matter at hand, either in the Brazilian Supreme Court (which recognized the unconstitutionality of the Article 20, § 3º, of the Federal Law n. 8.742/93), or in the ordinary courts, identifying the judicial standards to assess the claimant’s poverty. At that point, we will be able to assert that the Continuous Cash Benefit no longer maintains a total dependence on the regulative legislation; on the contrary, its normativity derives from its condition of a constitutional principle