Supreme Court of Canada will hear challenge on state secularism

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OTTAWA – Quebec’s controversial secularism law, known as Bill 21, will be debated at the Supreme Court of Canada.

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The country’s highest court announced Thursday that it will hear the case of English Montreal School Board, et al. v. Attorney General of Quebec, et al. over the law that was passed by the province’s National Assembly in 2019.

Applications for leave to appeal are always granted or denied without any explanation from the court. No dates have been provided for the hearings.

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The court, which typically takes four months to decide whether to allow a case to proceed, took more than eight months in this highly political case.

Premier François Legault has made affirming state secularism a central part of his Coalition Avenir Québec government. Bill 21 prohibits certain public sector workers, such as judges, police officers, teachers and prison guards, from wearing religious symbols at work and requires them to perform their duties with their faces uncovered.

However, the government has used the notwithstanding clause of the constitution to shield the law from the courts. Every five years, this provision must be renewed by Quebec’s legislature. It was renewed last year.

The CAQ government and Premier Legault have always maintained that the law is “reasonable.”

While the bill is unpopular and highly controversial outside Quebec, the provincial government has maintained for more than five years that Quebecers are largely in favour of it. However, a recent study found that about 51 per cent of Quebecers “agree that neutrality is exercised by banning religious symbols.”

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“This proportion has remained fairly stable over the three years for which we have data,” the study noted.

Nevertheless, the law has been challenged by many groups on multiple grounds, including minority language educational rights and gender equality right, first before the Quebec Superior Court and then before the Quebec Court of Appeal. Both courts ruled that the ban on wearing religious symbols could not apply to MNAs.

The Superior Court sided with the English Montreal School Board on the ground of minority language educational rights. However, the province’s appeal court overturned the decision in February 2024.

Justice Mahmud Jamal announced last year that he had decided to recuse himself from the case to avoid “distraction” after Quebec’s attorney general and others raised concerns about his potential for bias.

Justice Jamal was chair of the board of directors of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association when the group challenged Bill 21 in Superior Court in 2019. The court indicated that “Justice Jamal took no part in the judgment”.

More to come…

National Post
atrepanier@postmedia.com

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