12-year legal fight over school prayer ends
CALGARY • A long-running legal battle is over for a Calgary private school that had been trying to overturn a tribunal’s finding that it discriminated against two Muslim students who were barred from praying on campus.
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Thursday it won’t hear the latest appeal from Webber Academy.
“Disappointed, not surprised. There’s no way forward beyond what the decision of the Alberta Court of Appeal decided, and so we will have to obey the penalty in terms of the financial payment to the complainants,” said school president Neil Webber. “Looking forward to the future, we’ll have to think very carefully about what we can do to maintain our current situation whereby we don’t have prayer space.”
The dispute was triggered in February 2012 when parents of the two Muslim students filed complaints with the Alberta Human Rights Commission.
Sarmad Amir and Naman Siddiqui, who were in Grade 9 and 10 at the school, told the commission praying is mandatory in their Sunni religion. They said the school told them their praying, which requires bowing and kneeling, was too obvious and went against the academy’s non-denominational nature.
The matter resulted in several appeals over the past 12 years.
In the most recent appeal last year, the Alberta Court of Appeal dismissed Webber Academy’s argument that its religious freedoms were infringed upon by the demands of the human rights commission.
Neil Webber said the school, which he founded in 1997 and currently has just over 1,000 students, will pay the original $26,000 fine, plus interest, imposed by the commission.
It will also deal with any demands to provide prayer space if asked, he said, but there have been none since the legal battle began.
“We wanted to have a non-denominational school where religious practice didn’t occur at the school and that we welcomed kids from all different religions and cultures. We have that mix now, which is fantastic,” said Webber.
“I guess life doesn’t always go the way we want it, so we’ll have to accept it and deal with it accordingly.”
Webber said the school’s legal fees came in at just under $1 million.
“It’s not been inexpensive. I think on principle what we wanted to do was the right thing.”