Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative government says it will fight to defend a court challenge to its school pronoun law.
“Alberta’s government will vigorously defend our position in court,” Heather Jenkins, press secretary to Justice Minister Mickey Amery, said in a statement after two 2SLGBTQ+ advocacy groups officially filed a court challenge last week.
Jenkins stressed the legislation was introduced to strengthen ties between parents and their child’s education.
She said it will provide “more transparency, clarity, and consistency in their education and school community so students can continue to learn and grow.”
In the application, Egale Canada and Skipping Stone ask the Court of King’s Bench to declare the rules unconstitutional.
Premier Danielle Smith says Alberta parents will need to give permission before a student aged 15 or under can use a name or pronoun at school other than what they were given at birth.
The law was passed last year and came into effect at the start of this school year. It requires children under 16 to have parental consent to change their names or pronouns. Students aged 16 and 17 don’t need consent, but their parents have to be notified.
Bennett Jensen of Egale said the rule targets gender-diverse youth and exposes them to harm and serious risks.
“For the small minority of the minority population we’re talking about, who don’t have access to a safe and supportive home, what is being denied is the ability to be affirmed and supported at school — which we also know from the evidence can be the difference of making it to adulthood or not,” Jensen said in an interview.
The court application notes that parental notification and consent aren’t required for all students who want to go by different names. It applies only when their request is made “for reasons related to the student’s gender identity.”
Jensen said that, on its face, is discriminatory.
“And it targets an already vulnerable group of young people,” he said, adding, “Animating all of this, of course, is the suggestion that there is something wrong with being gender diverse.”
The pronoun restrictions present an impossible choice: be outed at home or remain closeted at school.– Legal challenge of pronoun legislation
The court application also points to gender-diverse students who do not feel safe coming out to their parents or who simply aren’t ready to do so.
“For [them], the pronoun restrictions present an impossible choice: be outed at home or remain closeted at school,” states the application.
Smith has said parents need to know what’s going on with their children and her government’s restrictions are reasonable.
“I think it’s well understood that children aged 15 and under are under the supervision of their parents, and you can’t have another adult making decisions over their lives without including their parents,” she said last week when asked about the impending legal challenge.
The issue is not limited to Alberta. In Saskatchewan, Premier Scott Moe’s government introduced a similar pronoun law in 2023. Last year, Moe invoked the Charter’s notwithstanding clause last year to keep its pronoun rules in effect amid legal challenges and appeals.
The notwithstanding clause allows governments to override certain Charter rights for up to five years.
The Alberta law is part of a suite of controversial changes from the UCP affecting transgender people in the province.
Another law now in effect blocks transgender athletes from Alberta who are 12 and older from competing in female amateur sports. That means parents are being asked by school authorities about their children’s assigned sex at birth in order for them to participate in female sports.
Egale and Skipping Stone have also challenged a third Alberta law, which would prohibit doctors from providing gender-affirming treatment such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy for youth under 16.
The law isn’t in effect because of a temporary court injunction issued in June. In early August, Alberta’s government appealed that injunction.
Opposition NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi says all three laws punch down on the most vulnerable.
“This UCP government claims to love freedom, but they take away people’s rights every minute they can,” he said.
