Gwendolen Morgan
Solicitor
Human rights and public law
Gwendolen advises and represents individuals and organisations wishing to challenge the actions and decisions of a wide range of public authorities. Her areas of practice include public law, human rights, health & social care, education and discrimination law.
Gwendolen is a trainer for the British Institute of Human Rights on human rights and equality law. She also advises on Liberty's Human Rights advice line. She is a founding committee member of Young Legal Aid Lawyers and is involved in the Solicitors International Human Rights Group’s Central America working group.
Gwendolen was 'highly commended' in the category of Junior Lawyer of the Year at the Law Society Excellence Awards 2009. She was a finalist in the 2008 Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year awards – in the ‘Young Solicitor’ category.
She has published articles on forced labour, EU law and disability rights in the New Law Journal, special educational needs in the Independent Lawyer, and community care law in Progress. She has advocated for access to justice in Legal Aid Review, The Observer, Prospects and Chambers.
Cases
Public law and human rights
- Successful public law challenges against the CPS and police for failure to properly investigate allegations of trafficking and forced labour in breach of their positive obligations under Article 4 ECHR and the CPS code. One case has been referred to the European Court of Human Rights and the other resulted in trafficking charges.
- Gwendolen represents the Badger Trust in relation to the Welsh Assembly Government’s proposed anti-TB badger cull.
- She is acting for an immigration detainee who was handcuffed to a guard 24/7 whilst in hospital with severe back pain. This case raises important issues about the Home Office’s policy on restraint of immigration detainees.
- She represented a parent group in relation to a public law challenge of a local authority’s failure to conduct adequate race and disability equality impact assessments in its reorganisation of local schools.
- She advised a multi-cultural literature trust on a public law challenge to the Arts Council funding cuts.
- She has advised on challenges to inappropriate police cautions.
- She has also assisted in the following cases:
- A v B [2009] UKSC 12 - a public law/Art 10 challenge to MI5’s refusal to permit publication of a former employee’s memoirs.
- Equality and Human Rights Commission’s successful intervention in R (RJM) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2008] UKHL 63.
- A challenge to the Foreign Office’s refusal to properly investigate a massacre by British troops in Malaya in 1948.
Discrimination
- She persuaded a leading DIY chain to change its policy nationwide and make the ‘reasonable adjustment’ of providing wheelchairs on-site to disabled customers in 171 stores.
- She successfully settled one of the first discrimination claims under EC Regulation No. 1107/2006 for a disabled air passenger.
Health and social care
- She successfully represented a critically ill, disabled young patient in a case where the PCT had decided not to resuscitate her client. This decision was overturned.
- She has successfully challenged PCTs on a number of NHS continuing care decisions and has frequently engaged in negotiations with local authorities about clients’ care packages, charges for services and choice of placement.
- She has been instructed on a number of Howard League referrals regarding young offenders’ rights to accommodation and support under community care legislation. She is also advising a local authority on the rights of care leavers.
Education
- Education cases include advising on special educational needs tribunals, exclusions and admissions, school transport, university fees and general judicial review challenges against schools, academies, city technology colleges, higher education institutions and local authorities.
Gwendolen studied law at Trinity College Dublin. Before qualifying as a solicitor in Fisher Meredith LLP, Gwendolen worked in the Justice and Home Affairs department of the European Commission in Brussels, and at the Central District Court of California. She speaks French, Spanish, German and Irish.
