Under the Anti-Social Behaviour Act, police have had powers since Easter to impose dispersal orders on any group of two or more young people aged 16 or under to leave an area and not return after 9pm.
Liberty is challenging the dispersal order after a teenager in West Sussex agreed to allow it to bring a test case in his name.
Patricia Durr, parliamentary adviser at The Children's Society, said that the powers related to the presence of children and young people in an area, regardless of whether they had committed a criminal act or not, leading to assumptions that children's presence caused problems for the community.
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