Judge Mahmud Jamal was president of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association when it opposed the secularism law, Quebec argues.
QUEBEC — In the wake of the legal challenge to Bill 21, Quebec’s state secularism law, Quebec’s attorney general and justice minister, Simon Jolin-Barrette, is asking Supreme Court Judge Mahmud Jamal to recuse himself, fearing that he “does not have the impartiality required to hear this case.”
In a letter sent to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, Jolin-Barrette says Jamal was the president of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association when it filed an appeal before the Superior Court to challenge the Act Respecting the Laicity of the State in June 2019.
The act prohibits state employees in positions of authority — including teachers — from wearing visible religious symbols such as the Muslim veil, Jewish kippah, Sikh turban and Christian crosses while working.
“As president of the association, Judge Jamal was necessarily involved in some way in the preparation of this 194-paragraph procedure, whether in its drafting, its revision or simply to approve its content,” reads the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Canadian Press.
The letter also says “the fact that Judge Jamal must decide questions of constitutional law raised by the association at the time when he presided over it means that today he would be the judge in a case in which he was a party.”
The Canadian Press also obtained letters from the Mouvement laïque québécois (MLQ) and the group Pour les droits des femmes du Québec (PDF Québec), which also call for the Jamal’s recusal for similar reasons.
But in a letter dated June 25, the Supreme Court said Jamal did not intend to step down. “(He) considers that there is no real or reasonably perceptible conflict of interest that would prompt him to recuse himself,” reads the letter, a copy of which The Canadian Press also obtained.
Jamal was appointed a judge to the Supreme Court of Canada on July 1, 2021. He previously served as a judge at the Ontario Court of Appeal from 2019 to 2021, according to the Supreme Court website. Before being appointed a judge, Jamal was an attorney with the firm of Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt.
Several groups, including the CCLA, have asked the Supreme Court to review the judgment of the Quebec Court of Appeal regarding Bill 21. The country’s highest court has not yet indicated whether it is going to take up the matter or not.
The federal government has already said it would participate in a possible legal challenge to Bill 21 before the Supreme Court, while the Quebec government has always promised to defend the secularism of the state “to the end.”
The Court of Appeal also affirmed that Quebec had the right to use the Charter’s notwithstanding clause in a preventive manner as it did in the case of Bill 21.
This was a significant setback for opponents of this legislation.