New Brunswick Education Minister Bill Hogan has said he intends to take the unprecedented step of disbanding Anglophone Eastern District Education CouncilIn the midst of a tense legal battle over Policy 713.
Controversial government changes to policy require school staff to obtain parental consent when a child under 16 requests to be addressed by a different name or pronoun if the request relates to gender identity. Is.
The District Education Council (DEC) is litigating these changes, which the council argues are unconstitutional and could be harmful to students. The DEC also believes that mandatory parental consent requirements are against the province’s Human Rights Act.
Instead, DEC has its own policy, which indicates that staff are to use and pronounce the names that students ask them to use.
After a tense struggle through correspondence, in which Hogan demanded DEC to conform to province policy, Hogan ultimately ordered DEC to send his lawyers to a lawsuit if council did not agree by 5 p.m. Thursday. Stop making payments.
In a letter sent to the minister on Thursday evening, DEC said they would do so only if he agreed not to take any further action to remove or repeal DEC’s policy.
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Hogan said he had no choice but to take the unprecedented step of dissolving DEC through the courts.
Michel Doucet, a retired Université de Moncton law professor with expertise in constitutional law, told Global News that under the Education Act, if a DEC is not functional or if they do not “respect” the Act, the minister can actually apply. Can break it.
“That doesn’t mean he’ll get it. He has to establish his case before the court, and the court will determine whether, in this case, he has reached the threshold for DEC’s dissolution,” Doucette said.
He says that since these are uncharted waters, it is not clear whether the minister has a strong case.
Doucette also said, however, that it would likely be a lengthy legal process. In the meantime, DEC will continue business as usual.
Doucette said, “If the DEC is dissolved, that would mean the case would be dissolved as well.”
A court hearing for an injunction to stop the minister from taking dissolution and other punitive steps will be held on June 18-19.
During a court hearing on Friday, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench Tracy Deware said “this chaos cannot continue” and that parents needed to know “who is making the decisions” before students return to classrooms in September. “.
A second and separate legal challenge to the province’s changes to Policy 713 is underway by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
The province’s three francophone districts have adopted their own policies in which staff use the names and pronouns requested by students for students in grades 6 and beyond. For those in Kindergarten through Grade 5, staff consider these requests on a case-by-case basis.
That policy is still visible online despite Minister Hogan’s request for the province to adopt the policy in late April.
-With a file from Global News’ Rebecca Lau
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