UR Pride taking legal action against Saskatchewan government

As students go back to school Tuesday, the Saskatchewan government’s pronoun policy will be going to court.

The UR Pride Centre for Sexuality and Gender Diversity threatened a lawsuit against the government in late August and is now following through with that action.

Egale Canada, a national LGBTQ advocacy organization, is representing UR Pride as its co-legal counsel when the matter goes to court on Tuesday.

Bennett Jensen, the director of legal at Egale Canada, said the policy violates the rights of gender-diverse students in Saskatchewan.

“This puts them in imminent danger of quite serious harm. UR Pride wants to stop that from happening,” he said.

The Saskatchewan government announced the policy in August, just a few weeks before students and teachers head back into the classroom. It requires parents to provide consent before a requested name and pronoun change from a student under the age of 16 will be honoured in the school.

Egale asked the government to pause the policy while a court considered the change and then ruled whether or not it’s legal or constitutional.

“Unfortunately the government didn’t respond to our request to put that pause in effect. So now we’re going to have to ask a judge to make that order,” Jensen said.

In the courtroom, they hope the judge, as quickly as possible, will order that the policy be suspended.

That decision could happen quickly; what might take some time is the process of considering if the policy is legal or not.

While the courts decide if the policy is constitutional, Jensen said students will be at a great risk for harm.

“We know that principals have been told by the school districts to make sure their teachers know if a trans or gender-diverse student comes out to them on Tuesday and asks for a different name or pronouns to be used, that the teachers are to immediately inform parents regardless of whether it’s safe to do so, regardless of whether in their own judgment the student might just need a little bit of extra time to be ready to talk to their parents. But now teachers aren’t allowed to use any of that judgment,” he said.

Unless the parent provides consent for a name and pronoun change, the teachers won’t be able to honour the student’s request. Jensen said that can cause psychological harm to the students.

“All of this will be playing out until a court hopefully orders an injunction,” he said.

Jensen said there is talk of New Brunswick taking its pronoun legislation to court as well. But he is hoping to get a clear-enough answer from the court in Saskatchewan that similar policies are unconstitutional.

Getting that answer will help inform other provincial governments and prevent them from pursing similar policies.

Jensen wants parents to know Egale is not advocating for less parental involvement, but simply to protect gender-diverse and trans kids.

“This debate often gets framed as parental rights versus the right of teachers or that activists are trying to limit parents’ involvement in their children’s lives and I just want to be really clear that no one is at all suggesting that parents shouldn’t be playing an active part in their children’s lives,” said Jensen.

“We really know how important it is for trans and queer kids to have supportive parents involved in their lives. What we’re really worried about are the small proportion of kids for whom they don’t have those safe homes. And we’re also wanting teachers to be able to use the judgment that they’ve been using for so many years to help support kids as best they can and use that discretion in individual circumstances and this policy just does away with all that discretion.”