The UK High Court of Justice ruled on Friday that the Home Secretary acted unlawfully in designating Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, and ordered the decision to be quashed.
The ruling found that the Home Secretary is empowered to exercise discretion when deciding to designate a group as a terrorist organization, and the proscription of Palestine Action failed to take into account “other factors,” aside from the group’s actions meeting the threshold for proscription, an error that the Court deemed “significant.”
While the judgment noted that “[r]eal weight must attach to the fact that Palestine Action has organised and undertaken actions amounting to terrorism,” it ruled that the “nature and scale of Palestine Action’s activities had not yet reached the level, scale and persistence to warrant proscription.” On this point, the judgment stated:
The purpose of the policy is clearly to constrain the use of discretion so that not all organisations that meet the concerned in terrorism requirement will be proscribed…
The High Court concluded that the ban on the group’s activities should be lifted “pending the possibility of an appeal.”
Palestine Action’s co-founder, Huda Ammori, celebrated the victory in a post on X (formerly Twitter), announcing that the ban was found “disproportionate to free speech.”
The Metropolitan Police responded to the decision in a press release posted on X, stating that, as the quashing order is pending appeal, “expressing support is still a criminal offence.” The response also warned that the police focus will now be on “gathering evidence of those offences” as opposed to “making arrests at the time.”
Ammori brought the legal challenge following the group’s proscription as a terrorist organization last year. Ammori’s challenge was made under the Human Rights Act 1998 and Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights. UK Secretary of State Yvette Cooper announced the categorization following the group’s vandalism of military planes, in protest of the conflict in Gaza. The categorization was made under the Terrorism Act 2000, making any affiliation or expressed support of the group an illegal offense.
A UK Home Office statistic shows that 1,630 terrorism-related arrests made in 2025 were linked to the Palestine Action ban. This statistic demonstrates a “rise of 660% compared with the previous year.” In August 2025, 466 demonstrators were arrested at a protest at Westminster, drawing concern from rights groups. Some critics charge that the proscription, which was rushed through Parliament, was a political move.
In late January, the last of eights imprisoned activists who had been on hunger strike in protest of the criminalization of Palestine Action ended his fast.
