Daniel Love and Brendan Thoms were men who had failed their migration character tests as a result of serving jail sentences.

His permanent residency visa was revoked by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, but this was later overturned and he was released from detention.

[6] A majority of the Court (Bell, Nettle, Gordon and Edelman) found that Aboriginal Australians (understood according to the tripartite test in Mabo v Queensland (No 2)) were not within the reach of the "aliens" power conferred by section 51(xix) of the Constitution.

The majority could not, however, determine whether Love was an Aboriginal Australian and remitted the matter to the Federal Court to deal with that question.

[4] Kiefel criticised Edelman who in his judgement argued that it would create a "hopeless and incoherent contradiction" within the legal system if despite the recognition of native title Aboriginal Australians could be treated as aliens.

[4] The following day, Christian Porter, then Attorney-General of Australia, said the decision created "an entirely new category of people in terms of what the government can and can't do" a non-citizen non-alien, or "belonger".

[9] Peter Dutton described the decision as "a very bad thing" that would be "exploited by lawyers", and said he had sought legal advice from the Department of Home Affairs that would be "looking to restrict the damage".

[10] Constitutional law professor Anne Twomey said that it was too early to tell what the ramifications would be, especially in light of the fact that each of the seven-person bench had given individual reasonings.

The Law Council of Australia said that a number of "complex issues" had been raised, and would give rise to a great deal of debate and scrutiny.