Quebec asks Supreme Court justice to recuse himself from Bill 21 case

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QUEBEC — Facing a legal challenge to Bill 21, Quebec’s secularism law, Quebec’s attorney general and justice minister, Simon Jolin-Barrette, has asked Superior Court Judge Mahmoud Jamal to recuse himself, fearing he “does not have the impartiality required to hear this case.”

The information, first reported by Le Devoir, was confirmed by The Canadian Press.

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In a letter sent to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, Jolin-Barrette said Jamal was president of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association when the organization filed an appeal to the Supreme Court in June 2019 challenging the Secularism Respect Act.

The law prohibits government employees in management positions — including teachers — from wearing visible religious symbols such as a Muslim headscarf, Jewish yarmulke, Sikh turban and Christian crosses while at work.

“As president of the association, Judge Jamal must have participated in some way in the preparation of this 194-paragraph procedure, whether in its development, its revision or simply in approving its content,” reads the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Canadian Press.

The letter also said that “the fact that Judge Jamal has to decide the constitutional law issues raised by the association during the time he presided over it means that today he would be a judge in a case in which he would be a party.”

The Canadian Press has also received letters from the Mouvement laïque québécois (MLQ) and the group Pour les droits des femmes du Québec (PDF Québec), which also demand that Jamal be excluded on similar grounds.

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But in a June 25 letter, the Supreme Court said Jamal has no intention of stepping down. “(He) believes there is no actual or reasonably perceptible conflict of interest that would cause him to recuse himself,” the letter, a copy of which was also obtained by The Canadian Press, reads.

Jamal was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of Canada on July 1, 2021. He previously served as a judge of the Ontario Court of Appeal from 2019 to 2021, according to the Supreme Court’s website. Before his appointment as a judge, Jamal was an attorney at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt.

Several groups, including the CCLA, have asked the Supreme Court to review the Quebec Court of Appeal’s ruling on Bill 21. The country’s highest court has not yet indicated whether it will take up the case or not.

The federal government has already announced that it will participate in a possible legal challenge to Bill 21 before the Supreme Court, while the Quebec government has always promised to defend the country’s secularism “to the very end.”

In February, the Court of Appeals approved Bill 21 in its entirety, confirming that it did not violate the linguistic rights of English-language school boards.

The Court of Appeal also confirmed that Quebec was entitled to apply the Charter’s “notwithstanding” clause preemptively, as it did with Bill 21.

This was a serious blow to opponents of the legislation.

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