Current legal cases
We challenge unjust laws, policies and practices by taking landmark legal cases on the most pressing human rights issues of our time.
Liberty has been providing legal advice and supporting groundbreaking cases since 1934.
We’re one of the only campaigning organisations in the UK that makes change by challenging injustice and defending our rights in the courts.
Our landmark cases help dismantle laws, policies and practices that violate people’s rights – and fight for justice for people who have been let down by those in power.
Current cases:
We are challenging the UK Government’s secret plans to access Apple users’ private data stored in iCloud.
Apple’s end-to-end encryption service, known as Advanced Data Protection (ADP), allows Apple iCloud users to have their data secured and protected – including bank details, health records, photos and private conversations – so that it is only viewable by the user.
In February 2025, it was reported that Home Secretary Yvette Cooper had issued Apple with a ‘Technical Capability Notice’ (TCN) under powers given by the Snooper’s Charter. The TCN demands Apple create a ‘backdoor’ into iCloud that would bypass its ADP security, giving the Government access to our encrypted data.
It is impossible to break encryption for a limited purpose. Once it is broken, it is broken for everyone. This TCN will put billions of people’s personal data at risk, exposing it to hacking and access by oppressive governments and other bad actors. This includes the data of anyone you interact with that’s saved to iCloud; calls, messages, and photos of your friends and family could be exposed. It particularly affects journalists, LGBT+ communities, religious groups and political activists who are at risk of being targeted.
It is the first time a major democracy has sought to weaken end-to-end encryption in this way. This is a frontier case to protect end-to-end encryption, and resist mass surveillance.
Alongside rights group Privacy International, we’re challenging the Government’s decision and the use of notices like this on the basis that they breach our rights to privacy and free expression, including because of their secretive nature, the indiscriminate mass surveillance they lead to, and the way they endanger the data of billions.
We have also applied to intervene in Apple’s own case challenging the Government’s TCN, as well as requesting to open up that case so that it happens at least in part in public. The Government’s attempt to keep even the basic facts of Apple’s case secret was recently rejected by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.
We have had confirmation from the Tribunal that our case will be heard, and the case will be progressing in the coming months.
We’re in the middle of a case against the Government because its Investigatory Powers Act (the Snoopers’ Charter) gives the police and security services powers to spy on everyone whether or not we’re suspected of wrongdoing.
We’re arguing these ‘bulk powers’ violate rights to privacy and freedom of expression, because there are insufficient safeguards in the Act, including to protect confidential journalistic sources and legal material.
In April 2018, the High Court said the Act was incompatible with EU law in the way that it allowed state agencies to access data held by telecommunications operators, and the Act was amended.
But in June 2019, the Court said the ‘bulk powers’ don’t breach privacy and free expression rights and the Act does contain sufficient safeguards for journalistic and legal communications.
In October 2020, the EU Court of Justice gave its judgment in a related surveillance case brought by Privacy International. The Court ruled against the UK Government, finding that mass data collection and retention practices must comply with EU privacy safeguards.
In June 2022, in our case, the High Court of Justice ruled that it is unlawful for the security services – MI5, MI6 and GCHQ – to obtain individuals’ communications data from telecom providers without having prior independent authorisation, when those bodies are carrying out criminal investigations.
We appealed against the High Court’s June 2019 and June 2022 judgments. In August 2023, the Court of Appeal said that the regime for sharing bulk personal datasets with overseas states was unlawful. However, it said that generally the Act is lawful. It sent one point on safeguards for journalists when it comes to bulk hacking back to the High Court of Justice for a further hearing.
In January 2024, the Government agreed to amend the Act to bring in new safeguards to protect journalists following our case. The amendment requires independent authorisation before the intelligence agencies can search for or retain confidential journalistic material, like communications with sources, from bulk data collected through hacking devices.
The amendment has been passed into law as part of the Investigatory Powers Act (Amendment) Act which officially came into effect in October 2024. Subsequently, we have dropped this part of our case.
In 2024, we challenged the lawfulness of the Government’s actions when it changed the definition of ‘serious disruption’ as a trigger for police interventions at protests to mean ‘more than minor’ disruption.
Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman tried to change the definition as part of the Public Order Act in January 2023, but the proposals were rejected by Parliament.
However, a few months later in June 2023, Braverman pushed through the changes using ‘secondary legislation’, which requires less Parliamentary scrutiny and debate.
The new regulations significantly lowered the threshold of when police can impose conditions on a protest and arrest demonstrators. Liberty was concerned about the way the Government had ‘sneaked this law through the back door’ to evade accountability after it had failed to make the change through Parliament.
Hundreds of protesters have been arrested under these measures since they were created, including the climate activist Greta Thunberg who was acquitted of all charges in a hearing in February 2024
In February 2024, Liberty took the Home Secretary to the High Court to argue that the new regulations had been created unlawfully.
The term ‘serious disruption’ comes from the Public Order Act 1986. We argued the Home Secretary has the power to clarify what is meant by ‘serious’ – not completely change its meaning.
We also argued the Home Office’s consultation on the changes was unlawful because it only had input from policing bodies and not anyone who would be impacted by the changes.
The Court agreed with us and ruled in May 2024 that the Home Secretary could not change the law as she did.
The Government immediately announced they were appealing the judgment before the General Election. The new Labour Government continued with the appeal, and we went to Court in December 2024. We’re now waiting for judgment from the courts.
These laws are still in use, despite calls from Liberty for police to refrain from using these powers and for prosecutions under the law to be put on hold until the appeal has been heard.
In January 2024, we supported Wendy Smith in a judicial review challenging the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act (Policing Act 2022) that gives the police new powers to ban Gypsies and Travellers from an area for up to 12 months, as well as fine, arrest, imprison and seize the homes of those living in roadside camps.
These changes to the law could potentially leave families, including children, destitute.
Wendy Smith, a Romany woman, took the Home Secretary to the High Court in January 2024. She argued that the new laws brought in by the Policing Act are discriminatory as they target ethnic minority communities who have no alternative stopping places. Liberty alongside Friends, Families and Travellers (FFT) acted as interveners on the case.
In May 2024, the High Court declared that parts of the Policing Act as a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights as they unjustifiably discriminate against nomadic people’s way of life.
Parliament will now have to review those provisions to ensure they comply with the Convention.
Recent cases:
In 2024, we supported Black Equity Organisation (BEO) in a successful legal challenge against the Mayor of London’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) and the Secretary of State for Justice (SSJ) over a discriminatory GPS tagging system.
Under the GPS tagging scheme, people who have been in prison for knife-related crimes can be selected for tagging when released from prison. This means they have to wear an electronic tag 24 hours a day as long as probation officials decide. The tag creates a detailed record of the wearer’s movements.
Black Equity Organisation (BEO), an anti-racism charity, challenged the scheme on the grounds of race discrimination. Statistics found that Black people are nearly twice as likely to be selected for tagging as white people. Additionally, BEO felt that MOPAC and the SSJ hadn’t complied with their equality duties to monitor and understand this disproportionality.
We acted as solicitors in this case. In January 2025, BEO reached an out-of-court settlement with MOPAC and the SSJ, with both MOPAC and the SSJ agreeing to make significant changes to the tagging system, with potential knock-on impacts for similar schemes.
MOPAC and the SSJ agreed to:
- withdraw the selection criteria for tagging, including the criteria relating to links to ‘gangs’, commonly understood to be a racialised term used to target young Black men
- collect, evaluate, and publish yearly data relating to selection for tagging
- improve transparency for those tagged, including earlier notification and information on how to challenge their tagging
- undertake a ‘rapid review’ to investigate and identify strategies to reduce racial disproportionality (including a review by an independent expert)
- invite BEO to join the SSJ’s Electronic Monitoring Advisory Group.
Raj Desai and Aidan Wills were instructed as counsel. Professor Jose Pina-Sánchez worked with Liberty/BEO as an expert on the statistical analysis of the racial disproportionality.
The Court Order reflecting the settlement is here. BEO’s statement is here. The case featured on ITV News, and the clip can be found here.
During our case against the Investigatory Powers Act, it emerged that MI5 has unlawfully stored and mishandled people’s data for a decade, including not deleting it when it should have done. For a long time, MI5 didn’t report its lawbreaking to the surveillance watchdog, and provided false information to get warrants and spy on us. We argued these breaches show the Investigatory Powers Act isn’t fit for purpose.
Liberty acted as lawyers for a woman who had been given a Community Protection Order (CPN) that forbade her from begging and even going into a show “without a valid reason”.
Liberty acted as lawyers for a Bulgarian man who had been given a Community Protection Order (CPN) that forbade him from pitching a tent, using a sound amplifier or making excessive noise in any public place in London.
We acted as solicitors for Ed Bridges, who challenged South Wales Police’s use of live facial recognition in public. In the world’s first legal challenge to police use of this tech, Ed argued the force was breaching rights to privacy, data protection laws, and equality laws.
We intervened in Privacy International’s case about whether decisions made by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) can be reviewed by a High Court judge.
In 2021, we intervened in Cameron Mitchell’s case against the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (SSWP) after his disability benefits were suspended for staying in hospital longer than 28 days.
Cameron Mitchell, a disabled man from Carlisle with complex needs, spent 128 days at the Royal Victoria Infirmary which resulted in his Personal Independence Payments (PIP) and his mother’s Carers Allowance being put on hold.
Under current regulations known as the “hospitalisation rule”, a person’s entitlement to their benefits is suspended if they receive care in hospital for more than 28 days. But Cameron still needed support from his mother as his known carer, and hospital staff relied on her to assess his pain levels and spot when he was about to have a seizure. The family lost more than £5,000 in benefits during his stay at hospital.
Liberty intervened in Cameron’s judicial review, which argued that the Department for Work and Pension’s (DWP) failing to provide an exception to the “hospitalisation rule” for disabled people, whose needs do not change, discriminates against them and breaches their human rights. We worked closely with Inclusion London on the intervention, so that the court would hear directly from disabled people.
In 2022, Cameron was given permission to go ahead with his judicial review, but he eventually settled his case and received compensation for the benefits his family had lost during his stay in hospital.
We supported Anthony Sinclair in a case against the Met Police, when he was arrested for refusing to comply with a ‘dispersal order’ outside a London hospital.
Dispersal orders allow police officers to direct a person engaging or likely to engage in anti-social behaviour to leave a specified area for 48 hours. These powers were not created to deal with poverty or homelessness.
In November 2023, police ordered several people living in tents outside of the hospital to leave the area. The air vents that their tents were next to provided extra warmth during the winter. When Mr Sinclair refused to leave, he was arrested. While he was in custody, his belongings – including his tent, mattress and toiletries – were thrown into bin lorries.
Liberty took legal action on behalf of Mr Sinclair who was also supported by grassroots organisation Streets Kitchen, on the grounds that dispersal orders should not prevent people from accessing where they live.
Liberty argued that the actions of the police breached Mr Sinclair’s human rights and put him and numerous other homeless people at risk of harm.
In January 2024, following legal challenge, the Met Police Commissioner issued an apology.
In the letter, the Met accepted that it was not lawful for officers to authorise a dispersal order or to issue directions to Sinclair, particularly because he had been living in that place for an extended period.
They agreed that the police did not have reasonable grounds to suspect Mr Sinclair had committed any anti-social behaviour.
They accepted that in doing so, officers unlawfully interfered with Sinclair’s right to respect his private and family life, under the Human Rights Act.
After Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 that the UK Government was spying on ordinary people not suspected of wrongdoing, Liberty and nine other non-governmental organisations (NGOs) challenged the surveillance regime in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. The Grand Chamber ruled in May 2021 in our favour. Like the previous court, the Grand Chamber ruled that the surveillance regime had insufficient safeguards. However, it also ruled that bulk interception should in principle be allowed.