Neil Sands
Zelinda Doria was six-months pregnant when she lodged a discrimination complaint after being forced to take early maternity leave. The Taupō beauty therapist never dreamed her unborn child would be nearly eight years old and halfway through primary school before the Human Rights Review Tribunal released its decision.
In fact, Doria’s daughter Valentina is now old enough to offer her own opinion about how her mother’s case was handled.
“She piped up the other day when I was talking to someone about it. She goes ‘yeah, that’s because it took so bloody long. I mean, eight years I’ve been alive and that’s how long it took’,” Doria told LawNews. “She’s so funny. I didn’t know if she’d understand this whole thing that her Mum was going through, but she totally got it.”
Doria’s marathon legal battle began in November 2017 (see timeline below) shortly after she learned she was pregnant and informed her employer, Diamond Laser Medispa. A couple of weeks later, after some time off and early departures from work due to morning sickness, Doria’s employer forced her to take maternity leave, much earlier than she initially planned.
A complaint to the Human Rights Commission led to a failed mediation attempt. The case went right up to the Court of Appeal before the Human Rights Review Tribunal (HRRT) held a hearing in June 2021.
‘Resource challenges’
Zelinda Doria and her daughter Valentina
Almost four years after the hearing, and eight years after the original complaint, the HRRT handed down a decision last month, finding Diamond Laser discriminated against Doria “on the basis of the prohibited ground of sex, which includes pregnancy and childbirth”. The tribunal awarded her $100,000 for pecuniary loss, loss of benefit and “humiliation, loss of dignity and injury to feelings”.
While delighted to have been vindicated, Doria is furious that her case took so long and wants an apology from the HRRT. A single mother, she said she was struggling financially while the complaint made its glacial progress through the tribunal. At one point she entered into a hardship program with her bank after failing to make repayments on her car.
“I was financially strapped overnight… and the delays were wild,” she said. “I don’t know if ‘gaslighting’ is the right term, but [the HRTT] was telling us we’re in the final stages and it’s going to be over in three months, then it’d be another three months, and another, and another.
“I just started to think ‘we’re never going to get a decision here and if we do, it’s not going to be good’. It was just so stressful. And they never gave us any explanation. They’d just continually say, ‘we’re sorry about this, but it is what it is’.”
In a statement to LawNews, HRRT chair Sarah Eyre acknowledged “the tribunal does have resourcing challenges” but did not specifically address the reasons for delays to Doria’s case.
Eyre said the HRRT set itself the goal in April 2023 of releasing 75% of decisions within six months of a hearing date or final submissions. She said the tribunal was meeting the target, despite the challenge of recruiting, appointing, re-appointing and training new HRTT deputy chairs and members.
“While new claims being filed increased last year, the number of active claims before the tribunal decreased over the same period as more claims were disposed of,” she said.
Who’s accountable?
The written decision in Doria’s case fails to mention the delays, but she believes they must be acknowledged.
Asked if she thought she deserved an apology, Doria replied: “Yes, 100%. It seems like there’s no accountability. I’ve been told by people ‘you should complain to the Ombudsman’. This entity doesn’t seem to be held accountable by any other entity.”
She says the lengthy proceedings have left her out-of-pocket, after the HRRT refused a request to add interest to the damages. Calculating the potential cost is an imprecise exercise, but according to the Reserve Bank’s inflation calculator, $100,000 in March 2018, when Doria first complained to the HRRT, would now be worth $128,000. Inflation from June 2021, when the HRRT hearing was held, would make $100,000 worth $124,000 today.
Doria said the HRRT’s sluggish progress had also discouraged others from pursuing similar cases, resulting in them accepting settlements rather than taking their case to a hearing.
“They were looking at my case and hoping to use it as an example but saw that it was taking a really long time, so they didn’t go down that path,” she said. “It’s absolutely a deterrent. If someone had told me it was going to take eight years, I’d have said ‘Stuff it!’.”
More ‘concerning’ cases
Doria’s lawyer Michael Timmins, who is Director of Human Rights Proceedings with the Human Rights Commission, said the delays in this case were not unique.
“I’ve had a couple of cases where it’s taken several years to get a judgment. One of them was a privacy matter, the other was a human rights matter that took almost three years to get a decision,” he told LawNews. “And I’m currently waiting on one case where the hearing was in September 2022, so we’re coming up to three years. That’s concerning.”
The HRRT’s performance goal focuses on the time between hearing and decision, but Timmins said there could also be long delays in getting to a hearing and these delays could create problems enforcing those decisions when they were finally handed down.
“In general, where there’s been a long delay between the hearing and decision, it does make enforcement difficult. People have moved on with their lives, their lives have changed. Sometimes, if the defendant is a company, it might have gone out of business. When you’re talking about relatively small amounts of money, it quickly becomes unaffordable to pursue enforcement.”
Timmins said that if the HRRT needed more resources to avoid lengthy delays, the government should supply them. “My sense is that since they’ve introduced these new timeframes, I’ve noticed that the decisions are generally coming much quicker.
“The tribunal is trying to meet those commitments. It’s a small tribunal, but it deals with important matters… so I think that the government should be making sure that it does have the appropriate resourcing to fulfil its mandate.”
TIMELINE
January 2016 – Beauty therapist Zelinda Doria begins work at Diamond Laser Medispa in Taupō
Mid-November 2017 – Doria informs her employer she is pregnant
Late-November 2017 – Doria is called into a meeting with her employer, which ends abruptly. Diamond Laser then sends her a letter saying she must begin maternity leave the next day. She is about seven weeks pregnant at the time.
February 2017 – Doria complains to the Human Rights Commission alleging discrimination. Mediation fails and she resigns from Diamond Laser
July 2017 – Doria’s daughter, Valentina, is born
March 2018 – Doria lodges a complaint with the Human Rights Review Tribunal (HRRT)
March 2019-November 2020 – HRRT proceedings stayed as Diamond Laser unsuccessfully seeks to strike out the complaint in the High Court and Court of Appeal
June 2021 – The HRRT holds a four-day hearing in Taupō
April 2025 – HRRT hands down its decision, finding Diamond Laser discriminated against Doria and awarding $100,000 for pecuniary loss, loss of benefit and “humiliation, loss of dignity and injury to feelings”.
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