This claim is true. According to Washington Post and Brazil Reports, on June 3, 2025, a Sao Paulo court sentenced Brazilian comedian Leo Lins to eight years and three months in prison following charges of defamation and hate speech. During the 2022 performance which had around 4,000 people in attendance, Lins "made jokes targeting elderly people, Black and Indigenous Brazilians, people with HIV, the LGBTQ+ community, evangelical Christians, Jews, people with disabilities — and even referenced pedophilia in his routine" (Brazil Reports). In her decision, Judge Barbara de Lima Iseppi wrote, "When there is a confrontation between the fundamental precept of liberty of expression and the principles of human dignity and judicial equality, the latter should win out.” Lins, who currently remains free during the appeals process, released a video where he said, "It seems like people have lost the ability to interpret the obvious,” he said. “We’re living through one of the biggest epidemics of our time: rational blindness. Judgments are now based entirely on emotion — no one listens anymore, they only want to impose their own truth.”
