Sabaah Khan and Asma Qureshi are two Muslim mothers in Quebec who, for years, have volunteered at their children’s schools. Khan helped with library duties and vaccination days while Quershi had been preparing food for her child’s graduation event. In March of 2026 these two women were told by the school board they could no longer continue volunteering due to the fact that they wear hijabs.
This case is the most recent in a series of incidents in which Muslim women have been barred from working in the public sector because they wear religious garments, as a result of Law 21.
Law 21 is provincial legislation that was passed in 2019 by the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) party headed by Premier François Legault. The law purports to reinforce the principle of secularism, laïcité, in public institutions by prohibiting certain public sector employees from wearing religious symbolism while on the job. This extends to: public school teachers, judges, crown prosecutors, and prison guards. The religious symbols targeted by this bill include items such as hijabs, turbans, kippahs, and large crosses.
The provincial government invoked the notwithstanding clause pre-emptively, before the law could be subject to judicial review, to pass Law 21, which critics argue violates Charter rights such as freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and equality. Legislation enacted using the notwithstanding clause is subject to a five year sunset clause. Law 21 was renewed by the Quebec government in 2024.
The impact of Law 21 on the Muslim community
Advocacy groups raising concerns about Law 21’s impact on equality rights highlight its disproportionate effect on Muslim women in Quebec. Steven Zhou, Media and Communications Lead for the National Council of Canadian Muslims, told rabble.ca that since one-in-four Muslims in Canada live in Quebec, it is clear the legislation would naturally have an outsized impact on the community.
The Association for Canadian Studies surveyed religious minorities in Quebec after the law was enacted. Seventy-eight per cent of Muslim women reported that their sense of belonging in Quebec society had worsened, and more than half said they experienced increased questioning about their religion during job interviews, compared with less than six per cent of the general population.
A study conducted by Concordia revealed that 76 per cent of women who wore a hijab reported experiencing discrimination following the law’s enactment.
Zhou points to a study that the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) conducted in 2024 which indicated that since Law 21’s passing 73 per cent of Muslim women have considered leaving the province altogether.
People now have to “make a choice between their identity, their freedom of expression, and their jobs… It is a really inhumane decision to ask people to make and thousands of people are now making it”, said Zhou.
The Quiet Revolution and Quebec’s history of secularism
Law 21 is rooted in Quebec’s longstanding tradition of promoting secularism. During the 1960s Quebec underwent a “quiet revolution” where the role of the Catholic Church was greatly reduced.
“The church influenced every aspect of public life in Quebec,” said Errol Mendes, a lawyer, author, and professor at the University of Ottawa. It had held power over areas such as education, health care, and social services.
“The church was so conservative that it was undermining modernization in Quebec,” said Daniel Béland, Director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada and James McGill Professor in the Department of Political Science at McGill University.
In response to the growing discontent over this, the provincial government in Quebec gradually took more control of those key social institutions by creating new ministries to run those sectors.
This marked a transition from religion dominating all aspects of public life in Quebec to a policy of secularism that separates religion from the state.
Since, secularism has become a key feature of Quebec’s identity with a history of promoting secular legislation.
In 2007 the Quebec government created the Bouchard–Taylor Commission to examine several religious practices in the province. In 2010 the Quebec Liberal government proposed Bill 94 which would have required people to show their face when giving or receiving government services. In practice, the policy would have largely affected Muslim women wearing niqabs. However, the bill was never actually passed.
In 2013, the Parti Québécois government introduced the Quebec Charter of Values. It included the proposal to ban all public sector workers from wearing “conspicuous religious symbols.” This charter never was passed as well.
In 2017, the Quebec liberals passed Law 62 requiring people to have their face uncovered to give or receive public services like riding a bus. Again, this mainly affected Muslim women in niqabs. However, this bill was struck down by the courts as it was argued that Law 62 violated people’s religious freedom rights. The latest iteration of secularist legislation is Law 21.
“I don’t think the secularization that took place in the 1960s is the same we’re seeing with Bill (Law) 21,” said Béland.
“Our understanding of secularism… that has always meant a kind of separation where the state takes no view when it comes to the various practices of its citizens unless those practices are truly damaging to public safety or just totally unreasonable and beyond decent behaviour. Bill (Law) 21 amounts to a complete kind of reversal of that framework… where the state is reaching very deeply into the lives of people and the guaranteed freedoms of people… when it comes to individual and religious expression,” said Zhou.
Quebec’s Role in the patriation process and the use of the notwithstanding clause
The belief that this type of legislation goes beyond mere secularism and violates fundamental freedoms has been supported by the lower courts in Quebec. To avoid these barriers in implementing this agenda Quebec has passed Law 21 using the notwithstanding clause to ensure courts could not strike it down in charter grounds as had been done with Bill 62.
Quebec has a unique history with the Canadian constitution leading to far more comfort in enacting the notwithstanding clause than may exist in other provinces.
During the patriation process, Quebec had several key demands for how the constitution should be reformed. These included greater provincial powers, the recognition of Quebec as a distinct society, a veto power over constitutional amendments, and greater limits placed on federal power.
The federal government rejected these proposals because of concerns that increased power for Quebec specifically could create an imbalance in Canada’s federation and that even greater decentralization would diminish the ability of the constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to apply uniformly and equally across the country.
As a result of this failure to reach a compromise, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau met with nine of ten premiers, excluding the Premier of Quebec René Lévesque, to strike a deal on a domestic amending formula for the constitution and to entrench the charter of rights and freedoms.
“There was a sense in Quebec that what happened during the patriation process was a betrayal… There is a sense that this was done against our will,” said Béland.
“This is important to understand the notwithstanding clause and why in Quebec we use it so much. After patriation until the Parti Québécois lost power they applied the notwithstanding clause to every single bill in the province to send a message we don’t agree with what happened… Although the notwithstanding clause was adopted under pressure by some premiers in western Canada, in the end it’s Quebec that started to use it,” Béland added.
The future of the notwithstanding clause
While Alberta, Ontario, and Saskatchewan have used the notwithstanding clause in unprecedented ways in recent years, its application in Quebec’s laïcité legislation is what prompted the Supreme Court of Canada to examine how the clause is used and whether any restrictions can be applied to it.
Despite Quebec’s use of the notwithstanding clause to shield the law from judicial scrutiny, several groups and organizations challenged the legislation in court anyways. Lower courts ruled that the law could not be struck down on Charter grounds because of the clause, prompting these groups to appeal the decisions all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Rather than examining the constitutionality of Law 21 directly, the Supreme Court is being asked to clarify the scope and limits of the notwithstanding clause, with the federal government, which is one of the interveners in the case, participating in these discussions.
On March 23, the Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments. Among the questions before the Court are whether judges can still rule on whether a right was violated even if they cannot strike down the law, whether invoking the clause could violate unwritten constitutional principles, and whether courts should be able to determine if repeatedly using the clause to protect a law effectively eliminates the right it is meant to override entirely.
If the court were to adopt these interpretations of the notwithstanding clause it would have lasting effects on policy throughout Canada and could, according to some, lead to heightened regional tensions.
“Any ruling on Bill (Law) 21 that goes against provincial autonomy I think will create a strong backlash in Quebec at least among nationalists,” said Béland.
Five provincial premiers, including François Legault of Quebec and Doug Ford of Ontario, sent a letter to the federal government asking it to withdraw its submission to the Supreme Court. They argued that Ottawa is interfering with provincial authority, putting national unity at risk, and undermining the constitutional compromise that led to the establishment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
However, for Mendes the upcoming Supreme Court case does not represent a potential national unity crisis but a source of optimism for the country.
Mendes, while not being hopeful that the Supreme Court will implement restrictions on how the clause is used, believes that the case could be a catalyst to spawn a larger conversation in Canada about the constitution leading to lasting change.
“I’d really like there to be… a grassroots movement…to start thinking about whether it is time to have a movement towards a 7/50 amendment of the constitution either to get rid of the clause itself or at minimum prevent the pre-emptive use of the clause,” said Mendes.
Mendes believes that the growing use of the clause in Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Quebec represents the “slow death of the constitution” with the flagrant and frequent violation of minority rights.
“I think… the way to try and save the charter, which is by all public opinion polls the most important document that Canadians think is in our constitution,… is to promote this idea of a citizens movement to get citizens to talk to their politicians” and encourage them to support meaningful restrictions on how the clause is used.
The growing use of the clause has already caused certain politicians throughout the country to champion procedural safeguards. Legislation regulating the use of the clause by the federal government has been tabled by Senator Peter Harder. Bill S‑218 proposes that if the clause is invoked it should necessitate a Supreme Court ruling on whether rights are infringed and approval by a two-thirds majority in the House of Commons. For Mendes, this bill is a positive step forward in protecting the charter of rights and freedoms.
As Law 21 heads to the Supreme Court, its impact extends beyond Quebec, sparking a larger conversation about the limits of government power and the future of the notwithstanding clause, the protection of minority rights, and regional tensions within the Canadian federation.
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