The English Montreal School Board is contesting Quebec’s Act Respecting the Laicity of the State
The Supreme Court of Canada has granted the Federation of Ontario Law Associations leave to intervene in the case of English Montreal School Board v. Attorney General of Quebec.
The matter involves a challenge to Quebec’s secularism law, the Act Respecting the Laicity of the State (Bill 21), which came into effect in June 2019. The legislation prohibits civil servants like teachers and police officers from wearing religious symbols while performing their jobs.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the National Council of Canadian Muslims were among the civil liberties groups claiming that Bill 21 discriminated against Muslim women wearing head coverings, according to CBC News. Mubeenah Mughal and Pietro Mercuri are appellants along with the school board.
The case was filed against the Quebec Attorney General, Quebec Superior Court judge for Montreal Jean-François Roberge, and Minister of Justice and French Language Simon Jolin-Barrette. Mouvement laïque québécois’ François Paradis was also named as a respondent.
The English Montreal School Board first brought its Bill 21 challenge to the Supreme Court last year. In February 2024, the Quebec Court of Appeal upheld the law, with the panel of judges deciding in a statement published by CBC News that Bill 21 did not violate “the unwritten principles of the Constitution, nor the constitutional architecture, nor any pre-Confederation law or principle having constitutional value.”
Jolin-Barrette had said in a statement published by CBC News last year that Quebec was prepared to defend the law, emphasizing the separation of religion and state as “one of the fundamental values for Quebec society.”
FOLA was granted intervenor status on the matter on July 23. Thirty-seven other interveners and groups of intervenors have been entitled to serve and file a factum no longer than 10 pages and book of authorities before September 17. The list of intervenors includes the Public Interest Litigation Institute, Muslim Advisory Council of Canada, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, Trial Lawyers Association of British Columbia, Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice and Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic.
The intervenors and groups of intervenors are also permitted to present oral arguments no more than five minutes long at the hearing of the appeal.
“We will seek to protect the inherent jurisdiction of the courts to make declarations on the constitutionality of laws enacted by Parliament and provincial legislatures,” FOLA said in a statement on its website.
