Minister for Immigration and Border Protection v SZSSJ [2016] HCA 29 (27 July 2016)On 10 February 2014 the Department of Immigration and Border Protection inadvertently published on its website the identifying details of 9,258 applicants for protection visas held in immigration detention (“Data Breach”). The Data Breach carried the risk that authorities in the named detainees’ countries of origin would become aware that they had sought protection in Australia, creating a new and independent risk of harm if those detainees were returned to those countries. The Department conducted International Treaties Obligations Assessments (“ITOAs”) to determine if the Data Breach affected Australia’s non-refoulement obligations with respect to the detainees.

Sentence T-766 of 2015 (Constitutional Court of Columbia)The Colombian Constitutional Court recently invalidated ‘strategic mining areas’ (SMA) which would have made mining concessions over almost 20% of the country available by tender, because they violated the rights of Indigenous and Afrocolombian peoples to prior consultation.

Case of Shahanov and Palfreeman v Bulgaria (Application nos. 35365/12 and 69125/12) [2016] ECHR 686 (21 July 2016)The applicants, Mr Shahanov and Mr Palfreeman, are currently serving extended prison sentences in Bulgaria's Plovdiv and Sofia Prisons. Both applicants commenced proceedings against the Republic of Bulgaria in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in 2012. The ECHR subsequently joined the proceedings due to their similarity.

Case of Foulon and Bouvet v France (Application No’s 9063/14 and 10410/14) (21 July 2016) The European Court of Human Rights (the Court) has delivered a judgment protecting the rights of children born as a result of international commercial surrogacy to have their relationships with their biological parents legally recognised. The Court unanimously found that refusal by French authorities to transcribe the birth certificates of children born under surrogacy agreements in India violated the children's right to respect for private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the Convention). The judgment resolves past uncertainty as to whether the Court's earlier decisions on surrogacy would extend to same-sex families.

Veasey v Abbott No. 14-41127, 2016 WL 3923868 (5th Cir. July 20, 2016)A US federal court has handed civil rights groups a crucial win ahead of this year's presidential election after ruling that Texas’ restrictive voting legislation has a discriminatory effect on Hispanic and African American voters. The 2011 law requires voters to produce one of a limited number of forms of identification and is the nation’s strictest voter photo ID law, leaving more than half a million eligible voters unable to fully participate in the democratic process. The recent ruling will require that measures are taken to allow disenfranchised voters to participate in this November’s US presidential election.

R (on the application of The Public Law Project) (Appellant) v Lord Chancellor (Respondent) [2016] UKSC 39 In the recent decision of R v Lord Chancellor [2016] UKSC 39, the UK Supreme Court has rejected an attempt by the Lord Chancellor to limit the availability of legal aid on the basis of citizenship and continuous residence in the UK, concluding this was outside the Lord Chancellor's power.

Case of O.M. v. Hungary  (Application numbers 9912/15) [2016] ECHR (5 July 2016)The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has held that immigration detention of an LGBTI Iranian person seeking asylum in Hungary contravened article 5(1) of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (the Convention).

Trinity Western University v The Law Society of Upper Canada [2016] ONCA 518The Court of Appeal for Ontario has upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss an application for judicial review of the Law Society of Upper Canada’s (LSUC) decision to refuse accreditation to an evangelical Christian law school. The Court reviewed the LSUC’s decision by reference to the standard of reasonableness and held that, in making its decision, the LSUC reasonably balanced the appellants’ rights to religious freedom against its statutory objective of protecting the ‘public interest’.

The Court of Appeal for Ontario has upheld a lower court's decision to dismiss an application for judicial review of the Law Society of Upper Canada's (LSUC) decision to refuse accreditation to an evangelical Christian law school. The Court reviewed the LSUC's decision by reference to the standard of reasonableness and held that, in making its decision, the LSUC reasonably balanced the appellants' rights to religious freedom against its statutory objective of protecting the 'public interest'.

United States v Texas 579 U. S. ____ (2016)The United States Supreme Court made a four-four split decision in a nine word judgement over the legality of President Obama’s deferred action immigration program. This upholds the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit's decision to maintain a nationwide injunction preventing implementation of the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents program (DAPA) and the expansion of the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA).

Case of Al-Dulimi and Montana Management Inc v Switzerland (Application no. 5809/08) (21 June 2016) The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights has delivered another decision in the long line of cases dealing with the relationship between sanctions by the United Nations Security Council (UN Security Council), and international human rights. By 15 votes to 2, the Grand Chamber found that Swiss courts did not provide meaningful judicial review of the applicant’s sanctions listings by the Sanctions Committee of the Security Council (Sanctions Committee). It therefore found a violation of Article 6(1) of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).  In doing so the Grand Chamber upheld the presumption, highlighted in previous cases that Security Council sanctions are to be interpreted on the basis that they are compatible with international human rights.

Utah v Strieff  357 P. 3d 532 (2016)The US Supreme Court has held that drugs and drug paraphernalia found after an unconstitutional stop were admissible because of an outstanding arrest warrant against the accused.