Quebec’s highest court upholds law banning public servants from wearing religious symbols

The new ruling overrides the Quebec Superior Court’s 2021 ruling which exempted the Montreal English school board from the province’s secularism law which prohibits public servants from wearing cross or other religious symbols.

Quebec’s highest court has upheld the province’s secularism law which bans civil servants from wearing religious symbols while at work.

On February 29, the Quebec Court of Appeals ruled that that the province’s secularism law, Bill 21, is constitutional and overturned a previous decision which exempted English schools from the law.

“The Act does not offend the unwritten principles or the architecture of the Canadian Constitution, nor does it offend any pre-Confederation statute or principle having constitutional status,” Appeal Court justices, Manon Savard, Yves-Marie Morrissette et Marie-France Bich wrote in their decision.

Bill 21, passed in 2019, bans all public servants, including public school teachers, police officers, government lawyers, and wildlife officials, from wearing any religious symbols while at work.

However, citing its commitment to “diversity, acceptance, tolerance and respect for individual rights and religious freedoms,” the Montreal English School Board indicated that it would not comply with the new law.

While the Quebec Superior Court exempted English schools from the secularism law in April 2021, the new 290-page ruling overrides the lower court’s decision.

The Superior Court decision was challenged in November 2022 by various civil liberties groups in addition to the Quebec government, which argued it created an unfair distinction between English and French schools.

The new decision relies on the province’s use of the notwithstanding clause, which allows the province to override most challenges to the legislation.

“The court has confirmed Quebec’s right to make its own decisions,” Premier François Legault told reporters in Montreal Thursday. “Secularism is a collective choice that is part of our history, in continuity with the Quiet Revolution. Secularism is a principle that unites us as a nation in Quebec.”

Legault confirmed that the province will continue using notwithstanding clause for “as long as it is necessary for Canada to recognize the societal choice of the Quebec nation.”

He added that the law is “non-negotiable” as the province recently tabled legislation to renew the application of the clause to Bill 21 for another five years.

While the decision was celebrated by the Quebec premier, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) called the ruling a “painful setback.”

“This is a heart-wrenching day and highlights the urgent need for people across Quebec who have stood up for the values of equality, justice and freedom to continue to raise their voices,” CCLA Executive Director and General Counsel Noa Mendelsohn Aviv said in a press release.

“These values are the ones that fuel our legal challenge and that lie at the heart of our collective struggle against Bill 21,” Aviv declared.

Similarly, Quebec Life Coalition President Georges Buscemi told LifeSiteNews, “This decision is completely consistent with the recent historical trend in Quebec, which is one of rejecting its Catholic heritage in favor of a liberal ‘enlightened’ worldview, which considers religion to be a purely private matter.”

“This decision confirms the ‘legality’ of Quebec’s secularism law, which purports to make the state ‘neutral’ with respect to religions,” he continued. “Whatever the intentions of this law, its effect is to extirpate all signs of religion from the public square, from Knights of Columbus meetings in community centers to prayer in daycares. So called state-neutrality is quickly becoming state atheism in practice.”

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U.S. Supreme Court to rule on major cases in 2025

Published on January 1, 2025

Todayville

From The Center Square

By Casey Harper

The U.S. Supreme Court has released a string of landmark rulings recently, from sending the abortion issue back to the states to granting a measure of presidential immunity to the overturning of Chevron deference, significantly weakening federal rulemaking power.

Supreme Court terms begin and end in October, and heading into the new year there are major cases awaiting.

Here are five of the biggest cases in which the Supreme Court is expected to weigh in by the end of this term:

Tik Tok Ban

Many lawmakers and national security experts have raised concerns about the invasive software attached to Tik Tok, a hugely popular entertainment app that reportedly has about 150 million active users.

China is the parent company for the app and has access to millions of Americans personal data through the Tik Tok software, which is unusually invasive and collects much more personal data on its users than other similar apps.

President Joe Biden signed into law a ban on the app unless it is sold to a U.S. company, citing these concerns.

While that ban had bipartisan support, President-elect Donald Trump weighed in on the case this week, asking the Supreme Court to delay the ban from going into effect.

“In light of these interests – including, most importantly, his overarching responsibility for the United States’ national security and foreign policy – President Trump opposes banning TikTok in the United States at this juncture, and seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office,” Trump’s lawyer said in a brief filed with the court.

During the presidential campaign, Trump promised to “save Tik Tok.”

“Furthermore, President Trump alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the Government – concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged,” the brief read.

Transgender Surgeries for Minors

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments last fall in United States v. Skrmetti, a case that considers the constitutionality of a Tennessee bill that bans transgender surgeries and hormones for minors.

Those medical procedures have become increasingly controversial since they can sterilize the recipients and are sometimes later regretted when the children come of age.

The Supreme Court ruling could kill or encourage similar efforts in states around the country.

Ghost Guns

In Garland v. VanDerStok, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives faces a legal challenge to its Biden-era rule attempting to block “ghost guns,” firearms without serial numbers that can be 3-D printed or put together by someone who acquires individual parts.

In particular, kits can be bought online that allow buyers to assemble a weapon. The case in question will require the justices to determine whether a disassembled kit of firearm parts is still considered a “firearm” and therefore subject to federal rules, especially rules requiring a serial number.

During oral arguments last fall, justices seemed skeptical of the legal challenge to the federal rule.

Age Verification for Pornography

The Supreme Court is expected to hear oral arguments Jan. 15 in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, a legal challenge to a Texas law requiring pornography sites to use age verification to prevent minors from seeing their pornographic content.

Critics have cited free speech concerns while proponents of the law have pointed out that there is legal precedent for age verification which is required for other products like alcohol and tobacco and has been required to view R-rated movies in theaters.

Pornography sites have pushed back on the law, which has been adopted in a similar fashion in about 20 Republican states around the country.

“Let me put this simply: these companies do not have a right to expose children to pornography,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement. “Texas has a clear interest in protecting children, and we have been successful defending this commonsense age verification law against a powerful global industry.”

Environmental Impact

The Supreme Court in December heard oral arguments in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, a case where justices will consider just how expansive the environmental constraints can become on federal agency actions.

Under the National Environmental Policy Act, federal agencies are required to assess the “foreseeable impact” on the environment of their actions.

However, just how broad that assessment must be is up for consideration.

Casey Harper

D.C. Bureau Reporter

Crime

Biden’s ‘preemptive pardons’ would set ‘dangerous’ precedent, constitutional scholar warns

Published on December 19, 2024

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Bob Unruh

Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley warned that preemptive pardons ‘would do precisely what Biden suggests that he is deterring: create a dangerous immunity for presidents and their allies in committing criminal abuses.’

An expert who not only has testified before Congress on the U.S. Constitution but has represented members in court cases is warning about Joe Biden’s speculated agenda to deliver to his friend and supporters preemptive pardons.

It is Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and author of The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, who wrote, “After years of lying to the American people about the influence-peddling scandal and promising not to consider a pardon for his son, Biden would end his legacy with the ultimate dishonesty: converting pardons into virtual party favors.”

There has been much speculation about those preemptive pardons from Biden, who lied about allowing juries and courts to determine the outcomes of son Hunter’s criminal gun and tax cases, flip-flopped and pardoned him.

Hunter Biden could have been ordered to jail for years for his felony gun convictions and his guilty pleas to felony tax charges.

However, Joe Biden handed him a get-out-of-jail free card, then followed up with hundreds and hundreds more commutations and pardons to a long list of those with criminal convictions.

The activity triggered a rash of speculation about those preemptive pardons, and Turley explains what’s going on.

“Democrats are worried about the collapsing narrative that President-elect Donald Trump will destroy democracy, end future elections, and conduct sweeping arrests of everyone from journalists to homosexuals. That narrative, of course, ignores that we have a constitutional system of overlapping protections that has blocked such abuses for over two centuries.”

Thus, the talk of preemptive pardons, but Turley said it wouldn’t work out.

“Ironically, preemptive pardons would do precisely what Biden suggests that he is deterring: create a dangerous immunity for presidents and their allies in committing criminal abuses,” he said.

He noted if Biden delivers those pardons, “he would fundamentally change the use of presidential pardons by granting ‘prospective’ or ‘preemptive’ pardons to political allies. Despite repeated denials of President-elect Donald Trump that he is seeking retaliation against opponents and his statements that he wants ‘success [to be] my revenge,’ Democratic politicians and pundits have called for up to thousands of such pardons.”

He explained there’s politics all over the scheme.

“After many liberals predicted the imminent collapse of democracy and that opponents would be rounded up in mass by the Trump Administration, they are now contemplating the nightmare that democracy might survive and that there will be no mass arrests,” he wrote. “The next best thing to a convenient collapse of democracy is a claim that Biden’s series of preemptive pardons averted it. It is enough to preserve the narrative in the face of a stable constitutional system.”

But there will be a cost to such a “political stunt,” he said.

“Preemptive pardons could become the norm as presidents pardon whole categories of allies and even themselves to foreclose federal prosecutions. … It will give presidents cover to wipe away any threat of prosecution for friends, donors, and associates. This can include self-pardons issued as implied condemnations of their political opponents. It could easily become the final act of every president to pardon himself and all of the members of his Administration.

“We would then have an effective immunity rule for outgoing parties in American politics.”

He noted that in the past, Bill Clinton pardoned both family members and political donors.

“Yet, despite that history, no president has seen fit to go as far as where Biden appears to be heading,” he said. Promoters of the plan, he said, “would prefer to fundamentally change the use of the pardon power to maintain an apocalyptic narrative that was clearly rejected by the public in this election. If you cannot prove the existence of the widely touted Trump enemies list, a Biden pardon list is the next best thing.”

Reprinted with permission from the WND News Center.