Overview

• The Federal Court dismissed a contempt application lodged by pro-Israel letter-writers against The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, ruling the newspapers had established arguable defences.
• Justice Rangiah ordered the letter-writers to pay half of the media outlets’ legal costs, finding no reasonable basis for contempt claims against the in-house lawyers.
• The dispute focused on four articles published in January 2024 before the February suppression order and amended in March to remove the protected names.
• Rangiah ruled that without knowledge of the nine complainants’ identities, the publishers could not have known which information the suppression order barred.
• He noted the letter-writers remain able to initiate contempt proceedings themselves under a different Federal Court rule.