Montreal school board brings Bill 21 challenge to Supreme Court

The English Montreal School Board (EMSB) is taking its challenge of Quebec's secularism law to the Supreme Court of Canada.

"We have always maintained that Bill 21 violates the rights of Quebec citizens," said Joe Ortona, chair of the EMSB.

"It discriminates against people of religious minorities. It hinders their opportunities to teach within our system. And it disproportionately targets, of all the groups, Muslim women."

The EMSB voted to take its challenge to the Supreme Court in a special meeting Wednesday.

Back in February, the Quebec Court of Appeal upheld the province's controversial secularism law in a ruling on challenges to the law's constitutionality.

The judgment quashed a previous exception, made by Superior Court Judge Marc-André Blanchard, that allowed English schools to employ teachers wearing religious symbols — such as a head covering — while on the job.

A panel of Appeal Court judges heard arguments from civil liberties groups challenging the law, as well as from the government, in November 2022.

Premier François Legault's government had appealed the Superior Court decision, rendered in April 2021, that upheld most of the law but made the exception for English schools.

His government had said the exception created an unfair distinction between francophone and anglophone schools.

In a summary of their decision, the Appeal Court justices, Manon Savard, Yves-Marie Morrissette et Marie-France Bich, said the law does not go against "the unwritten principles of the Constitution, nor the constitutional architecture, nor any pre-Confederation law or principle having constitutional value."

During the meeting Wednesday, two commissioners expressed concerns about how much has been spent on the legal fight, $1.3 million so far. But commissioners were overwhelmingly on the side of taking the case to the Supreme Court regardless.