Court of Appeal reserves decision at latest Sask. school pronoun law hearing

The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal reserved its decision Tuesday in the latest hearing regarding the province's school pronoun law.

The law requires students under 16 to get parental consent to use a different gender-related name or pronoun at school. The province invoked the notwithstanding clause in the law to sidestep the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In a Feb. 16 decision, Court of King's Bench Justice Michael Megaw ruled in favour of UR Pride, a 2SLGBTQ+ group in Regina, allowing it to make its case on the constitutionality of the new pronoun rules, despite the use of the clause.

The province is arguing that ruling overstepped the court's jurisdiction.

Over two days this week, the Court of Appeal heard from 11 interveners, including representatives from Amnesty International, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and the New Brunswick and Alberta governments.

Bennett Jensen, the director of legal for Egale Canada, which is representing UR Pride, said the number of different voices at the hearing shows the importance of the issue.

"What's powerful about this case and the hearings before the Court of Appeal are how many interveners have come, representing such a diversity of interests, and it speaks to the implications of this case across the population," Jensen said.

Jensen said the hearing could set precedent for other provinces that have or are looking to pass similar laws.

"This is a case where there has been a judicial finding that the policy and law causes irreparable harm to vulnerable young people. We would hope that governments that would see the judicial finding [and] act in a way that's more protective of the interests of young people in their province," Jensen said.

Milad Alishahi, co-counsel for the Saskatchewan government, said Monday that the government is not evading scrutiny by using the notwithstanding clause. He said it shifted scrutiny of the law from judicial accountability to democratic accountability, and that the court doesn't have jurisdiction to assess the law's legality because of the notwithstanding clause.

The timeline on the decision from this week's hearing remains unclear.