In April 2019, the HRLC compiled data showing that Indigenous Australian women were arrested for public drunkenness at 10 times the rate of the general population.

This was part of an effort to convince a coroner to rule systemic racism played a role in the death of Tanya Day, an Aboriginal woman who died in police custody.

[3] In April 2019 the HRLC (along with the Melbourne Fertility Control Clinic and Castan Centre for Human Rights Law) was granted permission to intervene in High Court of Australia cases (Clubb v Preston and Preston v Avery[4]) where two anti-abortion activists were challenging "safe zone" laws in Victoria and Tasmania which prevented harassment and protesting too close to medical facilities which provide abortions.

[7] In October 2017, the HRLC criticised Canstruct International for taking a $591 million Australian Government contract to run the Nauru Regional Processing Centre.

In accepting this contract, it will be taking the job of running a cruel, open-air prison detaining people, including many children, who are deeply traumatised.”[9] In January 2019, the HRLC criticised the Coalition Government of Scott Morrison for their plans to pass laws expanding powers of the Home Affairs Department (at the time headed by Peter Dutton) to strip Australians of their citizenship.

Anna Brown, then-Director of Legal Advocacy at the HRLC, said that the postal survey was designed to frustrate and delay marriage equality.