The Supreme Court of Canada will hear a contentious court challenge to Quebec’s ban on religious symbols.
Quebec’s controversial Bill 21 invoked the Charter’s notwithstanding clause when it was first passed in 2019, but that hasn’t stopped numerous challenges and appeals, which have finally made their way to the country’s top court.
The Supreme Court of Canada announced its decision to grant the English Montreal School Board and various civil liberties and community groups leave to appeal a lower court decision that upheld the Quebec government’s “secularism” bill.
The bill declared Quebec a secular state and banned government employees from wearing religious symbols such as hijabs, turbans, or crosses to work. It was first passed in 2019 in the National Assembly of Quebec and later defended from litigation using the notwithstanding clause.
The “notwithstanding clause” is a part of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that allows legislatures to override some Charter protections. Use of the notwithstanding clause lasts only five years but was renewed last year to uphold the ban.
The law has faced legal challenges since it was enacted in 2019; in February 2024, the Quebec Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the law, maintaining the religious symbol ban for public sector workers in the province.
The Supreme Court’s decision did not establish a date for the hearing.
The decision grants six separate applications for leave to appeal, including from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the World Sikh Organization of Canada, the National Council of Canadian Muslims, and those allegedly affected by the law. There are a total of 25 interveners involved.
“We are ready to vigorously defend the rights and freedoms of everyone who has been harmed and impacted by Bill 21 since this discriminatory law came into force,” Harini Sivalingam, the director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s equality program, said on Parliament Hill Thursday.
“Allowing Bill 21 to continue to harm religious minorities is a setback for equality, justice and freedom in Canada,” she said. “The Quebec Court of Appeal decision cannot be the final word, and we are glad that the Supreme Court of Canada agreed with us on this.”
Quebec Premier Francois Legault said his government will “fight to the end to defend” Quebec’s values and identity.
Quebec’s Attorney General Simon Jolin-Barrette and national assembly member Jean-Francois Roberge echoed the point in a joint statement shared on X.
“The Government of Quebec will use the parliamentary sovereignty provision as long as necessary to defend our societal choices,” the letter said. “We also call on other federated states to defend this position. It is a matter of our autonomy—an autonomy that is at the very foundation of the federal pact.”
Though Trudeau’s government often stayed out of Quebec politics in a bid to keep Quebec in confederation, Trudeau’s government became a vocal advocate against the bill. It pledged to challenge Quebec’s decision to use the notwithstanding clause to kill the religious symbol ban.
Roberge and Jolin-Barrette said an intervention from the federal government in the Supreme Court would “not only be disrespectful but could only be considered as an attack on the autonomy of the federated states.”
Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-François Blanchet said he didn’t mind that the case goes to the Supreme Court but that using Quebec taxpayer’s dollars against the “duly adopted” law in Quebec was unacceptable.
“Liberals, Conservatives and the NDP who pretend to like Quebec, let’s doubt it, want to use my money against me and against my will, which is not to be accepted,” Blanchet said on Parliament Hill. “The notwithstanding clause is a legitimate clause of their constitution. One of the meanings of this appeal is to challenge the Canadian Constitution in the Supreme Court. That’s quite something.”
The Montreal English school board welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision to hear its case, saying the law prohibits its school staff from wearing religious symbols and also limits the “career advancement” of its employees.“
We value the diversity of our students and staff and respect their personal and religious rights which are guaranteed both by the Canadian and Quebec Charter of Rights,” said board chair Giuseppe Ortona in a statement. “This legislation runs contrary to what we teach with regard to respect for individual rights and religious freedoms.”