Alberta’s highest court has struck the decision by a Catholic school division requiring a trustee to publicly apologize for a social media post that compared children waving Pride flags to Nazi Germany.
The issue erupted in the summer of 2023 and led Monique LaGrange to resign from the board of Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools after fellow board members voted to disqualify her.
The social media post, which LaGrange later deleted, featured an image of children holding Pride flags in a classroom underneath an image of children waving swastikas, with the caption “brainwashing is brainwashing.”
The board ruled the post and media interviews LaGrange did in the weeks that followed violated division policies and the province’s education law. It sanctioned LaGrange by demanding an apology, censuring her from parts of her job and requiring she undergo sensitivity training.
LaGrange unsuccessfully challenged the board’s decisions multiple times in court.
On Wednesday, a panel of three Court of Appeal judges ruled partly in her favour, striking the ruling that she issue an apology.
The court, in a written decision, says the board mandating LaGrange be “deeply sorry” amounts to compelled speech and imposes an impossible disciplinary standard, since she doesn’t believe she was in the wrong.
LaGrange had told the board that the “Holy Spirit” told her to make the social media post. She also told court she would do it again if she had the opportunity, says Wednesday’s court decision.
It notes that another court previously ruled the board couldn’t require an apology from LaGrange be “sincere,” since it amounted to compelled speech. The Appeal Court says it struck the entire apology requirement for the same reason.
It cited a number of past rulings about forced apologies, including one that determined they’re “likely to be regarded primarily as a form of unjust humiliation and not necessarily as a vindication of what is right.”
The court dismissed other aspects of LaGrange’s appeal, including her attempts to have the board’s decisions quashed for being unfair or unreasonable.
It also dismissed an argument by LaGrange’s lawyer that the board didn’t properly take Roman Catholic values into consideration.
The court says whether LaGrange’s post represented those values is irrelevant and subject to “considerable disagreement,” because her actions violated board rules.
“Ms. LaGrange was not sanctioned for her religious beliefs – she was sanctioned for engaging in conduct contrary to the behavioural standards set out in the (board’s) code of conduct,” says the decision.
“The offensive aspect of her conduct was not her personal beliefs about homosexuality or what she calls ‘gender ideology,’ but rather her choice to use her social media platform to ostensibly equate support for gender and sexual diversity with Nazism.”
