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Ed Noot, the executive director of the SCSBC, is overseas and declined to answer questions by email.

Canadian legal precedent largely falls on the side of protecting the rights of religious schools to set their own policies, as long as they’re made in good faith and based on honestly-held religious beliefs. The defining Supreme Court of Canada case dates back to 1984, when the justices ruled in favour of a Vancouver Catholic school that fired a teacher after she married a divorced man.

The B.C. Court of Appeal followed that line of thinking when its panel of five judges ruled in favour of TWU establishing a law school, calling the B.C. Law Society’s attempt to deny the school accreditation on the basis of its discriminatory covenant a well-intentioned act carried out in an “intolerant and illiberal” manner.

That case will likely end up in the country’s highest court, and there are those who say it’s time for a change in direction.

Vancouver lawyer and queer activist Barbara Findlay believes that freedom of religion and freedom from discrimination are both essential rights, but she has strong feelings about how these rights should be balanced.

“I say that your right to freedom of religion ends where you want me to do something. My right to be free from discrimination can only exist if your right to freedom of religion is not allowed to trump it,” findlay said.

“I’m hoping that this question will be definitively settled in the Trinity Western case when it heads to the Supreme Court.”