Palestine Action can appeal their terror ban at the Supreme Court, judges have ruled, setting up a final legal battle with the Home Office this autumn.
The Court of Appeal ruled last month that the group’s proscription under terrorism laws was lawful in a major win for the government.
Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr said that Palestine Action’s ban was “a justified and proportionate interference with individual rights”, describing the group as one that “overtly promotes unlawful violence amounting to terrorism”.
Now three justices at the Supreme Court have granted Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori permission to appeal the ruling. The challenge will be heard this autumn.
The ban, which began on 5 July last year, made membership of, or support for, the direct action group a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
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Palestine Action was banned by then-home secretary Yvette Cooper in July 2025 after members broke into RAF Brize Norton and vandalised jets to protest the war in Gaza.
A five-judge panel at the Court of Appeal found that Ms Cooper’s decision struck a “fair balance” between the need to safeguard national security and disrupting individuals’ rights to freedom of expression and assembly.
After the judgement, Ms Ammori said the decision was “one of the most extreme attacks on free speech and the right to protest in modern British history”.
Before the case reached the Court of Appeal, High Court judges had found that the ban was in fact unlawful, arguing that only a small number of Palestine Action’s activities amounted to terrorism, and that the group’s acts had not crossed the high bar to make it a terrorist organisation.
This week, the Metropolitan Police warned protesters campaigning in front of Westminster Magistrates’ Court that expressing support for Palestine Action is a terrorism offence.
Some 77 people were arrested at the protest in central London on Thursday, police said.
Hundreds gathered outside the magistrates’ court where more than 2,000 cases related to supporting the group had been due to be heard. But their cases have been adjourned to October, to await the outcome of the Supreme Court appeal.
Responding to the news that her case will head to the UK’s highest court, Ms Ammori said Thursday’s arrests “further evidences our case that the proscription of Palestine Action has become a vehicle for a far broader crackdown on expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian people.”
She added: “We will continue to fight this proscription all the way to the Supreme Court and, if necessary, to the European Court of Human Rights to overturn what has become one of the most extreme attacks on free speech and the right to protest in modern British history”.
