Pauline Hanson will take her long running legal dispute with a Greens Senator to the High Court after a recent ruling that she had racially discriminated against Mehreen Faruqi by telling her to “piss off back to Pakistan”.

The One Nation leader has revealed she will launch a constitutional challenge to the Racial Discrimination Act, which allows people to pursue legal complaints where they feel offended, insulted, humiliated or intimidated because of their race.

In July Senator Hanson lost an appeal against a judgement handed down in November 2024, which found she had breached section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act and ordered her to delete a social media post against Senator Faruqi.

“I’m taking this fight to the High Court for every Australian who feels they are being silenced and to keep their opinions to themselves,” Senator Hanson said in a statement announcing her latest legal move.

“Too many Australians are afraid to speak honestly about immigration, race, religion, Indigenous policy and other important issues because they worry they will be called racist, dragged through a complaints process or taken to court.

“That is not how a free country should work. Australians choose their government. The government should never get to choose what Australians are allowed to say.”

Senator Hanson said she was taking the action because she believes Australians should be able to disagree with each other, and “should be able to argue”.

“Section 18C makes it unlawful to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate someone because of their race, colour or national or ethnic origin.

“The Full Federal Court accepted that my comments were close to the core of political communication protected by our Constitution.”

“It also accepted section 18C casts a wide net, sets a relatively low bar and places a significant burden on political communication. Yet the law was still upheld,” Senator Hanson said.

In September 2022, Senator Faruqui took Senator Hanson to Federal Court over a post the One Nation leader made on Twitter, now X, which was published on the same day Queen Elizabeth II died.

Senator Faruqui, the Deputy Greens Leader in the Senate had first posted that she “cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonized people”.

Senator Hanson’s tweet, posted as a reply read: “Your attitude appals and disgusts me. When you immigrated to Australia you took every advantage of this country.”

A spokesman for Senator Hanson told The West Australian that the One Nation leader was paying for her High Court legal action using her own funds and was not receiving any external financial support.