Developments in Religious Freedom: What Saguenay and Loyola Tell Us -- and Don't -- About the Trinity Western University Law School Cases
(2016) 72 S.C.L.R. (2d) 75-95
22 Pages Posted: 3 Feb 2016
Date Written: January 1, 2016
Abstract
In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada made two significant decisions about freedom of conscience and religion: Loyola High School v. Quebec (Attorney General) and Mouvement laïque québécois v. Saguenay (City). Around the same time, Trinity Western University (“TWU”), an Evangelical Christian institution, sought accreditation for its proposed law school from the various provincial law societies. Many in the Canadian legal community saw this as engaging questions of religious freedom and equality rights. This is principally because students and faculty at TWU must sign a community covenant which, among other things, prohibits sexual intimacy outside of a marriage between one man and one woman. This article assesses the implications of the 2015 religious freedom cases for the ongoing litigation surrounding TWU’s proposed law school. It argues that the 2015 cases develop the jurisprudence in three relevant ways: (a) by addressing the issue of whether institutions can hold religious freedom rights, (b) by expanding upon the state’s duty of religious neutrality and secularism, and (c) by identifying three “core national values” that can justify limitations of religious freedom. While each of these developments is likely to play an important role in the TWU controversy, there is significant interpretive scope within them, leaving important questions unanswered.
Keywords: Religious Freedom, Sexual Orientation Discrimination, Religious Neutrality, Charter Values, Religious Institutions, Legal Education, Lawyer Regulation
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