(CBC) Quebec’s English school boards will have to abide by the province’s secularism law, known as Bill 21, until challenges against and in favour of the law are heard in court.
The province’s Court of Appeal has rejected a request by the English Montreal School Board which would have immediately exempted it and other English school boards from provisions of Bill 21 — such as the ban on hiring teachers who wear religious symbols.
In April, Quebec Superior Court ruled that though the law violates the basic rights of religious minorities in the province, those violations are permissible because of the Constitution’s notwithstanding clause.
The decision upheld most parts of the law in the face of four separate legal challenges — including from the EMSB, the National Council of Canadian Muslims and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association — each containing several different arguments about why it is unconstitutional.
