An attempt to get the Law Society of New Brunswick (LSNB) Council to withdraw approval of a controversial proposed law school at Trinity Western University was defeated on a tied vote Friday.
The New Brunswick society issued a statement saying the motion to rescind the approval “was not defeated, but it was not successful. There is a difference.”
After the 12-12 ballot, the president of the Law Society of New Brunswick, Hélène L. Beaulieu, Q.C., said “the result of the decision demonstrates the difficulty Council was faced with.”
Beaulieu noted the vote came after recent developments “that cast the future of the law school in serious doubt,” with the BC Law Society reversing an earlier decision to accredit the university and the BC government revoking its approval in response.
Still, the decision was hailed by the university, with spokesperson Guy Saffold saying TWU was “very pleased.”
“This is yet another milestone in the process of developing our School of Law,” Saffold said.
Saffold noted Trinity Western’s application to open a law school has been approved by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, as well as the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island, and the Yukon.
Opposition to the law school centres on a clause forbidding “sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman” in the covenant that all staff and students at the university are expected to abide by.
Critics say the clause is anti-gay and conflicts with a lawyer’s responsibility to uphold the rights and freedoms of all persons.
The university has said the issue is one of religious freedom.
TWU won a court battle over the same issue with the B.C. College of Teachers in 2001.
The case involved the College refusal to allow the university to assume full responsibility for its teacher training because of the TWU Community Standards at the time had a list of “practices that are biblically condemned” that mentioned “sexual sins including … homosexual behaviour.”
In an 8-1 ruling in 2001, the Supreme Court of Canada declared that that TWU “is a private institution that is exempted, in part, from the B.C. human rights legislation and to which the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not apply.”
The court decision said the university can believe what it wants about gay people so long as it doesn’t actually discriminate against them.
