The High Court has ended a compensation bid by Indigenous man Brendan Thoms, finding his detention by immigration authorities was legal.
Mr Thoms, 33, who was born in New Zealand, spent more than 500 days in immigration detention pending deportation, after a term in jail.
But he was released when the High Court ruled Indigenous Australians could not be deported.
Mr Thoms has been trying to sue the Commonwealth, saying his detention was illegal, but today the High Court found that was not the case.
Detention occurred before High Court ruling
Though Mr Thoms is a native title holder as a member of the Gunggari people, because he was born overseas, he lacks Australian citizenship.
As a result, when he was jailed for domestic violence assault he failed his migration test and was placed in immigration detention awaiting deportation.
The Commonwealth told the High Court that immigration laws required an officer to detain a person if they were suspected of being an unlawful non-citizen, and, because the High Court had not yet ruled on whether Indigenous Australians were subject to immigration laws, Mr Thoms's detention was lawful at the time.
Today, the High Court agreed, saying that at the time of Mr Thoms's detention, there were reasonable grounds to suspect he was an unlawful non-citizen.
The judges said the High Court's decision that people with Aboriginal heritage could not be "alien" to Australia did not retrospectively make that suspicion unreasonable.
Mr Thoms's lawyer Claire Gibbs said her client was very disappointed by today's ruling.
"The federal government now has an important opportunity to ensure that the findings of the historic [original] case are upheld and followed, so that no First Australians will ever again be declared aliens and threatened with deportation."
The court has also since heard a challenge to its original ruling over Indigenous deportation, in the case of New Zealander Shayne Montgomery.
The Federal Court found that Mr Montgomery was an Aboriginal person and could not be deported after time in jail, despite his lack of a biological link to any Indigenous person.
It is not known when the High Court will rule on that case.
