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A new school year has dawned, with the last Montreal students heading back to class Tuesday.

It’s typically a time of new beginnings: new teachers, new friends, new grades, new subjects, new books, binders and backpacks; a time tinged with excitement, hope and possibility.

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But this year there is a dark cloud hanging over the school year in the form of a new law that discriminates against a small number of teachers who wear religious dress.

Bill 21, Quebec’s secularism law, was adopted as the last school year drew to a close, so now is the first time its chilling measures will be felt. Based on the flawed premise that people of faith can’t be neutral in a secular state, the law bars public authority figures like police officers and judges from donning kippahs, turbans or hijabs in executing their duties. But the teaching profession is most heavily affected.

No new teachers who wear these articles of their faith can be hired. There is a grandfather clause to prevent teachers already in the classroom from losing their jobs. But they are henceforth denied the ability to change positions or promotion up career ladder. They have thus been stigmatized, condemned to a precarious kind of limbo, made to feel as if they are being begrudgingly tolerated.