McMaster wins judicial review over vaccine mandates
Four students kicked out of university classes
An Ontario court decision that vindicated a process that saw four devout Christian students kicked out of their university classes over vaccinations may provide a blueprint for future mandates, according to a health law expert.
This ruling, the first on the merits of vaccine mandate policies in Ontario courts, focused on McMaster University’s decision-making process when it rejected vaccine exemption requests from the students.
“The process reasonably balanced the interests at stake in the difficult context in which the decisions had to be made,” the ruling said.
The decision, released on April 29, comes at a time when many mandatory vaccine policies are ending across Canada.
Yet others remain in place, such as federal mandates for air travel.
McMaster paused its mandatory vaccine policy as of May 1, and they are continuing to review the policy.
In a news release, the university said it still encourages staff and students to make sure they are fully vaccinated and up to date on booster shots.
Lorian Hardcastle, a health law expert at the University of Calgary law school, told the National Post this may be the first in a wave of COVID-19 related cases making their way into the courts.
“I expect to see, in the coming months, various cases looking at not only vaccines but issues around masking and freedom of assembly,” Hardcastle said.
This case, which offered a detailed look at McMaster’s exemptions process, could “help provide procedural guidance to organizations that may be wanting to implement these defensive requirements,” said Hardcastle.
“Largely, the court seems to approve of that process, and it met the requirements of procedural fairness.”
She said other organizations may look at McMaster’s process, and the court’s decision to help them create their own processes for vaccine mandates and accommodations.
Last fall, when McMaster University implemented mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations, the four students applied for vaccine exemptions on religious grounds, arguing it violated their Godgiven rights to bodily autonomy.
All four students argued their religious beliefs precluded them from getting the COVID-19 vaccines. Ana Stanciu, one of the students, provided a letter from a priest of her Romanian Orthodox Church, in which he argued it was “an affront to Christianity” to improve upon, in the judge’s words, “one’s Godgiven immune system.”
Sean Glynn, another student, said we’re living in times that “have been prophesied in the Bible” and that COVID-19 vaccines and vaccine passports may bring about “the mark of the beast,” a reference to the Book of Revelation.
They also said receiving a vaccine developed, in part, thanks to fetal cell tissue that is used in the development of many medicines and may have come from an aborted fetus, violated their religious beliefs.
The exemptions were rejected by the university and the students were then unenrolled from their courses until they were vaccinated, or the mandate ended. In court, McMaster University’s counsel argued the students were using “political objections dressed up as religious argument.”
“The university rejected their requests because it concluded that the real basis for their objection lies in their personal beliefs that the pandemic is not really a grave public health situation and that the available vaccines have not been proven effective and may have unanticipated adverse consequences,” the judge wrote.
The four students, represented by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, a legal group that has been heavily involved in court cases against pandemic public-health measures, challenged the university’s legal power to implement a mandatory vaccine policy and their decision-making process.
The students also claimed they were discriminated against based on their religion under the Ontario Human Rights Code and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The code and charter claims were later dropped by the students, who instead focused their court challenge on the procedural fairness of the exemption process.
Jorge Pineda, a lawyer for the students, told the National Post in an interview that they dropped the claims not because they felt the claims didn’t have merit, but because they “thought it was in the best interest for our clients to have a narrow focus in this case.”
It limited the students’ claim to whether McMaster had fairly made the decision to reject their exemption requests.
Pineda says withdrawing the claims leaves the door open for future challenges to vaccine mandates.
The judge in this case upheld McMaster’s decision-making process, saying it “reasonably balanced the interests at stake in the difficult context in which decisions had to be made.”