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It didn’t take long for Trinity Western to take all three law societies to court, arguing that their respective decisions did not follow fair administrative procedures and further violated the university and its future law graduates’ rights to freedom of religion, freedom of association and religious equality under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As of last November, Trinity Western’s application for judicial review was successful at both levels of court in British Columbia and Nova Scotia while being consecutively denied in Ontario. In February, the Supreme Court of Canada granted leave to appeal in both the British Columbia and Ontario cases, with the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society deciding not to appeal.

I am a Christian law student. It may be unsurprising, then, that I share the opinions of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court and the British Columbia Court of Appeal — namely, that a proportionate balancing of all applicable Charter rights and values requires that Trinity Western’s law school be approved. Yet I also recognize that this is a deeply complex case; no fair-minded person would deny that the Supreme Court will need to deftly weigh all of the important Charter considerations that are at play following last week’s rare two-day hearing in Ottawa.

Still, the complexity of the case should not diminish the fact that each of the law societies’ respective decisions were underpinned by an implicit strain of prejudice toward the very idea of a religious law school. Indeed, it has since become increasingly clear that part of the opposition to Trinity Western stems from the fact that in this secular age the school dares to suggest that the study of faith and law are not antithetical pursuits.