In Spila v. Minister for Justice, Justice Cooke in the High Court refused to allow judicial review of a decision to refuse citizenship to ethnic Russians from Latvia, but held that the applicants could make a new application for citizenship based on the claim that they were “stateless persons”.
The applicants had argued that the fact that they were stateless persons had not been adequately assessed by the decision maker, and they had therefore applied for judicial review of the decision. However, Justice Cooke held that the issue of statelessness had not been referred to by the applicants in their initial application, which meant that the Minister had absolute discretion to make his decision. In other words, the applicants should have expressly stated in their application that they were stateless, so the Minister could make a decision on that issue.
Justice Cooke stated that, “the Court is satisfied that this application for judicial review is unnecessary and unfounded and that the complex issue as to the possible status of the applicants as “stateless” individuals in international law or for the purpose of the policy maintained by the Minister must be decided definitively in the first instance by the respondent Minister before it need be judicially reviewed”.