Civil liberties group ends N.B. lawsuit over gender identity policy
Holt government’s December changes to Policy 713 made legal challenge moot, association says
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is ending its lawsuit against the New Brunswick government over its policy on 2SLGBTQ+ students choosing their own names and pronouns at school.
The association says the case became moot in December when the Liberal government made new changes to the policy, ending a parental consent requirement added by the Progressive Conservative education minister in the previous government.
Several trans-rights groups, along with the association, announced the end of the case on Wednesday, pointing out that the province was defying a recent trend of anti-trans policies elsewhere.
"I'm proud that New Brunswick has taken a different path," said Mariah Darling, the education co-ordinator for Chroma New Brunswick.
In 2023, the Higgs government changed the policy to require parental consent if a student under the age of 16 wanted to adopt new names or pronouns for informal use at school.
The civil liberties group went to court for a judicial review of that change, saying it violated the Charter of Rights of Freedoms, the provincial Education Act and the Human Rights Act.
Premier Susan Holt campaigned last year on adopting recommendations by Child and Youth Advocate Kelly Lamrock that would have set Grade 6 as a new threshold for assessing whether a student had the capacity to make the decision themselves.
But once in power her government opted against any age threshold.
"The new Policy 713 presumes that all students have the capacity to use their chosen name and / or chosen pronouns informally at school," Education Minister Claire Johnson said when she announced the change Dec. 19.
Harini Sivalingam, the director of equality programs for the civil liberties group, said this was key to ending the legal dispute.
"I think they heard, and we're actually really grateful that they listened to, the concerns raised by community members about what they hoped to see in terms of the changes and what would be more rights-respecting," she said.
Sivalingam said no conditions will be attached to the end of the lawsuit.
Holt said she was happy to see the case end.
"It's been a goal of ours to get out of court, because there's a cost for that in time and resources, and we're pleased the CCLA saw fit to pull out of their case against the government of New Brunswick," she said.
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