The Racial Discrimination Act 1975(Cth) is an Act of the Australian Parliament, which was enacted on 11 June 1975 and passed by the Whitlam government. The Act makes racial discrimination in certain contexts unlawful in Australia, and also overrides state and territory legislation to the extent of any inconsistency.
Minister of Home Affairs and Another v Fourie and Another; Lesbian and Gay Equality Project and Others v Minister of Home Affairs and Others, [2005] ZACC 19, is a landmark decision of the Constitutional Court of South Africa in which the court ruled unanimously that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. The judgment, authored by Justice Albie Sachs and delivered on 1 December 2005, gave Parliament one year to pass the necessary legislation. As a result, the Civil Union Act came into force on 30 November 2006, making South Africa the fifth country in the world to recognise same-sex marriage.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in South Africa have the same legal rights as non-LGBT people. South Africa has a complex and diverse history regarding the human rights of LGBT people. The legal and social status of between 400,000–over 2 million lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex South Africans has been influenced by a combination of traditional South African morals, colonialism, and the lingering effects of apartheid and the human rights movement that contributed to its abolition.
Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany perpetrated the Holocaust: a large-scale genocidal campaign in which approximately six million European Jews were systematically murdered throughout German-occupied Europe. Since World War II, several countries have criminalised Holocaust denial—the assertion by antisemites that the genocide was a myth, fabrication or exaggeration. Currently, 17 European countries, along with Israel and Canada, have laws in place that cover Holocaust denial as a punishable offence. Many countries also have broader laws that criminalise genocide denial, including that of the Holocaust. Among the countries that have banned Holocaust denial, Russia, Austria, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania have also banned Nazi symbols. Any expression of genocide justification is also a criminal offence in several countries, as is any attempt to portray Nazism in a positive light.
The Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act, 2000 is a comprehensive South African anti-discrimination law. It prohibits unfair discrimination by the government and by private organisations and individuals and forbids hate speech and harassment. The act specifically lists race, gender, sex, pregnancy, family responsibility or status, marital status, ethnic or social origin, HIV/AIDS status, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth as "prohibited grounds" for discrimination, but also contains criteria that courts may apply to determine which other characteristics are prohibited grounds. Employment discrimination is excluded from the ambit of the act because it is addressed by the Employment Equity Act, 1998. The act establishes the divisions of the High Court and designated Magistrates' Courts as "Equality Courts" to hear complaints of discrimination, hate speech and harassment.
National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality and Another v Minister of Justice and Others is a decision of the Constitutional Court of South Africa which struck down the laws prohibiting consensual sexual activities between men. Basing its decision on the Bill of Rights in the Constitution – and in particular its explicit prohibition of discrimination based on sexual orientation – the court unanimously ruled that the crime of sodomy, as well as various other related provisions of the criminal law, were unconstitutional and therefore invalid.
The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) was inaugurated in October 1995 as an independent chapter nine institution. It draws its mandate from the South African Constitution by way of the Human Rights Commission Act of 1994.
Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act was a provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act dealing with hate messages. The provision prohibited online communications which were "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt" on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination. Complaints under this section were brought to the Canadian Human Rights Commission and if the Commission found sufficient evidence, the case would be heard by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. Section 13 was repealed by the Parliament of Canada effective June 2014.
Pierre Francois de Vos is a South African constitutional law scholar.
National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality and Others v Minister of Home Affairs and Others, [1999] ZACC 17, is a 1999 decision of the Constitutional Court of South Africa which extended to same-sex partners the same benefits granted to spouses in the issuing of immigration permits. It was the first Constitutional Court case to deal with the recognition of same-sex partnerships, and also the first case in which a South African court adopted the remedy of "reading in" to correct an unconstitutional law. The case is of particular importance in the areas of civil procedure, immigration, and constitutional law and litigation.
This is a timeline of notable events in the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in South Africa.
South Africa is a secular state, with freedom of religion enshrined in the Constitution.
Bowman v United Kingdom [1998] ECHR 4 is a case in the European Court of Human Rights, concerning the legitimate limits on campaign finance spending. A majority of the court held that countries joined to the European Convention on Human Rights may be required to permit minimal levels of campaign spending. The minority held that the United Kingdom's near total ban on election-related spending should be regarded as compatible with ECHR article 10.
Steven Arnold Majiedt is a South African judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. He joined the Constitutional Court in October 2019 as an appointee of President Cyril Ramaphosa. Formerly a practicing advocate, he served in the Supreme Court of Appeal from 2010 to 2019 and in the Northern Cape High Court from 2000 to 2010.
Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, deals with offensive behaviour "because of race, colour or national or ethnic origin" in Australia. It is a section of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, which was passed by the Australian Parliament during the term of the Whitlam government and makes racial discrimination unlawful in Australia. Section 18C was added by the Keating government in 1995. The Section has been controversial and subject to much debate.
The Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill is a bill aimed at reducing offensive speech and curbing hate crimes in South Africa. The Bill was introduced in 2016 and sits before the South African National Assembly. Some of the stated intentions of the legislation include to "provide for the prevention of hate crimes and hate speech" and to "provide for effective enforcement measures" against those who express their "prejudice or intolerance towards the victim." The bill has been subject to much debate, with some groups expressing concern over the implications of restricting speech. Others have contended that the bill is necessary given the level of discrimination in South Africa.
Hate speech is public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation. Hate speech is "usually thought to include communications of animosity or disparagement of an individual or a group on account of a group characteristic such as race, colour, national origin, sex, disability, religion, or sexual orientation".
Jonathan Dubula Qwelane, known as Jon Qwelane, or by his initials JQ, was a South African journalist and radio talk show host who also served as the country's ambassador to Uganda in the 2010s. A pioneering and acclaimed black journalist, in his final years Qwelane was embroiled in a legal dispute as a result of a homophobic column that he wrote in 2008, that had important implications for the boundaries between hate speech and freedom of expression in South African law.
Freedom of Religion South Africa is a South African nonprofit fundamentalist Christian advocacy group. It was founded in 2014 by Andrew Selley, the lead pastor and founder of the Joshua Generation Church, after parents filed a complaint to the South African Human Rights Commission that alleged that Joshua Generation Church advocated for corporal punishment in the home. In Freedom of Religion South Africa v Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, FOR SA unsuccessfully opposed a ruling by the Johannesburg High Court that deemed corporal punishment to be assault.
Reddell and Others v Mineral Sands Resources (Pty) Ltd and Others is a 2022 decision of the Constitutional Court of South Africa concerning the right of trading corporations to claim for general damages in defamation suits. A majority of the court upheld that right but qualified that it does not apply to defamation suits arising from public discourse on matters of public importance. Moreover, the court located the right as grounded in a common law personality right rather than as grounded in the Bill of Rights; in that it diverged from the Supreme Court of Appeal's opinion in Media 24 Ltd and Others v SA Taxi Securitisation.
