In Ammori v Secretary of State for the Home Department, a five-judge Court of Appeal panel held that the Home Secretary's decision to proscribe Palestine Action under section 3 and schedule 2 of the Terrorism Act 2000 was lawful. The open judgment, published by the judiciary on 15 June, overturned the Divisional Court's earlier conclusion that the decision could not stand.
The case was not about whether the court approved of Palestine Action's aims. It was about the statutory threshold for proscription, the Home Secretary's discretion, and whether the interference with rights to expression and assembly was justified. The Court of Appeal said the Home Secretary had the institutional competence and democratic accountability to make the assessment, and that the decision struck a fair balance between rights and national security.
That reasoning is the core of the ruling. The court gave weight to the Home Secretary's assessment of conduct and risk, including effects on third parties such as companies targeted by Palestine Action activity. Al Jazeera reported that the court said the group's conduct was not that of a non-violent direct-action organisation. The Guardian reported that the panel ruled the ban lawful and reversed the February High Court ruling.
The judgment also refused Huda Ammori permission to cross-appeal on procedural fairness and discrimination grounds. The court rejected the argument that the Home Secretary acted unlawfully by failing to give Palestine Action an opportunity to make representations before the proscription order was laid before Parliament, and refused the Article 14 discrimination challenge linked to rights under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The practical stakes are large because proscription criminalises support and membership-related conduct. The Financial Times reported that more than 3,000 people had been arrested and more than 700 charged in connection with support for the banned group, with many cases paused while the appeal was pending. The judgment does not by itself decide those individual cases. It removes a major legal obstacle that defendants and prosecutors had been waiting on.