Human Rights Act 1993


The Human Rights Act 1993 is an Act of the Parliament of New Zealand that deals with discrimination. It was a consolidation and amendment of the Race Relations Act 1971 and the Human Rights Commission Act 1977. It came into force on 1 February 1994. The Act governs the work of the New Zealand Human Rights Commission.

Legislative features

The act outlawed discrimination on a wide variety of grounds, including:
  1. Sex
  2. Marital status
  3. Religious belief
  4. Ethical belief
  5. Colour
  6. Race
  7. Ethnic or national origins
  8. Disability
  9. Age
  10. Political opinion
  11. Employment status
  12. Family status
  13. Sexual orientation
There are a significant number of caveats, including "genuine occupational qualification," "domestic employment in a private household," "to preserve reasonable standards of privacy," "national security" and "organised religion."
The Act does not explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity, and the New Zealand Human Rights Commission, supported by the government's legal office, has accepted complaints of discrimination based on gender identity on the ground of sex for many years. However, the decision to interpret the prohibition of discrimination on the ground of sex to cover discrimination based on gender identity is easily reversed. But an important dimension of the exercise undertaken by the Commission in New Zealand was toward the empowerment of trans people, referencing the Yogyakarta Principles. In effect the commission was responding to one of the Yogyakarta Principles' Additional Recommendations to national human rights institutions that integrate the promotion of human rights of persons of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities into their work.