From the age of 16, you legally cannot be discriminated against based on your age, and yet the voting age is set at 18. These two laws clash. It is a breach of 16 and 17 year-old’s young people's human rights to not let them vote.

 

The New Zealand Bill of Rights says the government cannot discriminate against people based on the grounds listed in The Human Rights Act 1993. That includes age discrimination for people 16 and over. This means the government legally has to justify why 16 and 17-year-olds can’t vote.

 

There are justifications for setting the drinking age at 18 and for setting the gambling age at 21. We took the New Zealand Government to court because we believed they had not justified why the voting age should be 18 instead of 16. Over the course of 3 years we battled it out at the New Zealand High Court, then at the New Zealand Court of Appeal, and then in 2022 we took our case all the way to the New Zealand Supreme Court –where only the biggest court cases of public interest are held.

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In July 2022, we won our court case and the New Zealand Supreme Court ruled that the Government has not justified why the voting age should be set at 18. Therefore stopping 16 and 17-year-olds from voting in elections is unjustified discrimination and is in breach of their human rights.