Default Label and Justification Suddenly Stopped Working

Hi Aishat,

I’ve seen this happen when there are backend updates or policy conflicts in Microsoft Purview Information Protection. Since your new label with the same settings works, that suggests the labeling policies themselves are fine, but the existing ones may have become corrupted or desynchronized. A good first step is to republish the policy that assigns the default labels and requires justification. If that doesn’t help, delete the old policy entirely and recreate it from scratch, rather than just recreating the labels. Sometimes the issue lies at the policy enforcement layer rather than the label definition.

Another angle to consider is whether there have been any recent updates to the Unified Labeling client, Office apps, or compliance portals. I’ve seen cases where cached label policies caused old labels to stop applying until users cleared the Office cache or restarted apps. Try forcing a policy sync from the sensitivity bar and checking diagnostic logs. If the justification requirement is still bypassed, it may be worth opening a support ticket with Microsoft, as this issue can sometimes be tied to a service-side regression. For now, recreating the entire policy set usually restores normal function.