A Muslim organization and civil liberties group are asking the Quebec Court of Appeal to hear their challenge to a trial ruling that upheld for now the ban on any space to pray in the province’s public schools.
Education Minister Bernard Drainville, citing the State Secularism Act, in April banned Quebec public schools from making prayer spaces available to students.
Mr. Drainville specified that students would still be allowed to pray at school, but discreetly and in silence. The two bodies challenging the decree, however, stressed that Muslim prayers require “physical action”.
An injunction petition had been filed on behalf of a 16-year-old Muslim student at a Montreal-area high school who had been granted a place to pray during lunchtime, but lost that site after the April ministerial decree took effect.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the National Council of Canadian Muslims hoped to at least get the ban suspended until their legal challenge is heard on the merits.
But, last June, Quebec Superior Court Judge Lukasz Granosik refused to suspend the ministerial decree through an interim interlocutory injunction. The judge ruled that the two bodies had failed to prove that it was “urgent” to suspend the ban pending the case being heard on the merits by the court.
Both organizations are now asking the Court of Appeal for leave to challenge this decision.
Before going back to school
Laura Berger, a lawyer for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, pointed out in particular that the case on the merits would not be heard before the students return to class at the end of August.
“The students will be seriously affected,” she said Monday. This will happen before we can get a decision on the merits. We therefore hope to suspend the decree and the decision to apply it to students by then. »
Olga Redko, who represents the two organizations, said Monday in the Court of Appeal in Montreal that the trial judge had not properly taken into account the “irreparable harm” that would be caused to Muslim students and the urgency of this situation.
” The judge [Granosik] himself concluded that the decree infringed the freedom of religion of the children concerned”, argued Ms.e Redko. But later, she said, the judge did not sufficiently consider the consequences of this violation of individual rights when determining whether the ban should be suspended.
The government’s lawyer, Isabelle Brunet, pleaded for her part in the Court of Appeal that Judge Granosik had applied the law correctly and that the request for authorization had little chance of succeeding. She stressed that the bar was high for suspending a government decree before her challenge is heard on the merits.
Me Brunet also acknowledged that the ban limited certain individual rights, but she argued that successive Quebec governments had decided to remove religion from public institutions. Lifting the ban, she argued, would effectively prevent other students from attending an entirely secular school.
“Second-class citizens”
Stephen Brown, CEO of the National Council of Canadian Muslims, said in a scrum Monday that the ban on open prayer in schools undermined basic religious freedoms and turned devout students into “second-class citizens.”
“It’s a fundamental question of who we are as a country,” he said in French. The government should not have the right to tell us how to dress, what to eat, what to think, how to exercise a spirituality: it is not up to the government of Quebec to determine the parameters which are acceptable to pray.
“If the government is able to simply take away the rights and freedom of conscience, the freedom of religion, simply because politically, it serves them, then we have real questions to ask ourselves about the solidity of our rights and our democratic regime in this country, ”said Mr. Brown.
Appeals Court Judge Robert Mainville said Monday he believed he could rule later this week on whether to appeal the trial judge’s ruling on the injunction request.