A Case of Religious Freedom : Multani v. Commission Scolaire. Examines the two principle reasons for the ruling in favour of Multani.

Essay by Anonymous UserHigh School, 11th gradeB+, November 2008

download word file, 6 pages 0.0

SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1 In November 2001, a boy who followed the Sikh faith dropped his ceremonial kirpan dagger in a Montreal school yard. The school board was contacted about the incident and proceeded to impose a board-wide ban on the kirpan. The school board ban was overturned by the Quebec Superior Court, but then upheld by the Quebec Court of Appeal. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) which held that the ban was in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The SCC determined that in the case of Multani v. Commision Scolaire Marguerite -Bourgouys, the ban on the kirpan, as a symbol of religious expression, was not found to be reasonable or justifiable as required by Section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but primarily because the school board ban on kirpans violated the individuals right to freedom of Religion under Section 2 of the Charter.

Firstly, the Supreme Court of Canada, in their ruling on the case of Multani v. Commision Scolaire Marguerite -Bourgouys, found that the school-board imposed ban on kirpans , was not reasonable or justifiable as required by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Marguerite -Bourgouys School Board failed to establish that kirpans were a dangerous weapon or that they posed a threat to other students and the S.C.C. also decided that the ban was not reasonable because it was possible to accommodate the kirpan easily without a ban. At trial, the School Board first attempted to prove that school safety concerns outweighed the violation of religious freedom [the kirpan ban].�The school board argued that allowing the kirpan in school would "lead to a proliferation of weapons" in school, and have a "negative impact" on the school environement.�...