Canada’s Supreme Court must strike down Quebec’s Bill 21

Under the guise of preserving secularism, this law allows the exclusion of people based on their religious identity.Published On 22 Mar 2026On Monday, the Canada" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="52245" data-entity-type="organization">Supreme Court of Canada will begin a four-day hearing for one of the most consequential constitutional cases in the country’s recent history. At issue is Quebec’s so-called “secularism law”, known as Bill 21 – a law enacted in 2019 that prohibits certain public sector workers from wearing visible religious symbols at work.It bars many public sector employees, including teachers, prosecutors, police officers, and judges, from wearing religious symbols such as hijabs, turbans, kippahs, and other visible expressions of faith while at work.There is much at stake in this case that raises fundamental questions about religious freedom, equality, and the limits of state power in a constitutional democracy. In addition, another significant issue is that to get the bill passed, Quebec’s government had used the “notwithstanding clause”, a unique provision in Canadian law that allows it to override fundamental rights and freedoms. No other constitutional democracy in the world has a similar blanket override of fundamental rights and freedoms.The Quebec-government" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="52246" data-entity-type="organization">Quebec government claims that the law is necessary to preserve the religious neutrality of the state. Yet Bill 21 does the opposite: by forcing some individuals to choose between their profession and their religious identity, the Quebec-government" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="52246" data-entity-type="organization">Quebec government is not remaining neutral – it is effectively excluding people of faith from public sector employment.The use of this extraordinary, and until recently rarely used, constitutional mechanism has turned the spotlight on Bill 21 beyond the borders of Quebec and the debate over secularism and religious freedoms. It has become a test of how far a democratic government can go in limiting fundamental rights and freedoms.