RIO DE JANEIRO >> A Brazilian Supreme Court panel on Monday unanimously upheld the decision of one of its justices to block billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform X nationwide, according to the court’s website.

The broader support among justices undermines the effort by Musk and his supporters to cast Justice Alexandre de Moraes as a renegade and authoritarian censor of political speech. The panel that voted in a virtual session was comprised of five of the full bench’s 11 justices, including de Moraes, who last Friday ordered the platform blocked for having failed to name a local legal representative as required by law. X will remain blocked until it complies with his orders and pays outstanding fines that as of last week exceeded $3 million, according to his decision. De Moraes also set a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($8,900) for people or companies using virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access X.

– The Associated Press