Plaintiff S120 of 2015 v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection & Anor; Plaintiff S121 of 2015 v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection

These proceedings concerned two applications for judicial review brought by separate plaintiffs, identified as Plaintiff S120 of 2015 and Plaintiff S121 of 2015, against the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection and another respondent. The core of the dispute revolved around the lawfulness of decisions made by the Minister to refuse to grant the plaintiffs a visa, specifically a Protection visa (Class 785). The applications were heard together by Gageler J of the High Court of Australia.

The central legal issue before the Court was whether the Minister's decisions to refuse the visa applications were vitiated by jurisdictional error. This question arose because the Minister's delegate, in making the decisions, had relied on information that was not disclosed to the plaintiffs, and consequently, they were not afforded an opportunity to respond to that information. The plaintiffs contended that this failure to provide procedural fairness constituted a jurisdictional error, rendering the decisions invalid.

Gageler J reasoned that the principles of procedural fairness, as established in Australian administrative law, require that a person affected by a decision be given a reasonable opportunity to present their case and to deal with adverse information that might influence the decision. In this instance, the delegate's reliance on undisclosed information meant that the plaintiffs were denied this fundamental right. His Honour concluded that the failure to provide procedural fairness was not merely an error of law within jurisdiction, but a jurisdictional error that went to the validity of the decision-making power itself. Consequently, the decisions to refuse the visa applications were found to be unlawful.