Bill 21: NAWL defends the constitutional right to gender equality before the Supreme Court

Anishinaabe Territory / Ottawa, March 24, 2026 – The National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL) will intervene this week before the Supreme Court of Canada to defend the constitutional right to equality between women and men, as guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

In 2019, Quebec passed Bill 21, the Act respecting the laicity of the State, which prohibits certain people working in public institutions from wearing religious symbols in the exercise of their functions, and requires those people to perform their functions with their face uncovered. The Act pre-emptively uses section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the notwithstanding clause, to allow the law to operate notwithstanding violations of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  

The legal challenge to the Act respecting the laicity of the State asks whether the judiciary can intervene to protect the rights of Muslim women, who are disproportionately impacted by the law. 

NAWL will argue that section 28 of the Charter protects women’s right to the equal enjoyment of fundamental rights and freedoms. This provision takes precedence over the notwithstanding clause set out in section 33. 

“The Attorney General of Quebec and others seek to use the section 33 notwithstanding clause to reinstate Canada to a system of legislative supremacy that existed pre-Charter and consistently afforded women, particularly Indigenous and racialized women, lesser human rights,” said Suzanne Zaccour, Director of Legal Affairs at NAWL. 

Section 33 cannot shield laws that result in women’s unequal enjoyment of rights  

Section 28 of the Charter states that its equal rights mandate for men and women applies “notwithstanding anything” in the Charter. 

This provision, included at the insistence of the founding mothers of NAWL and other feminist advocates, entrenched a constitutional safeguard to protect women’s rights. Every phrase in section 28 was deliberately chosen to ensure that women’s rights were not diminished in the name of collective interests, including cultural interests and preserving social convention. 

This is not a symbolic provision. As the original notwithstanding clause, section 28 was added to the draft Charter to respond to the risk that women’s rights would be undermined through the interpretation of other Charter provisions. 

The Supreme Court is now called upon to affirm that the protection of gender equality in the Charter is not symbolic; it is the last bastion against patriarchal interpretations of collective interests that can and often do target women, especially racialized women. 

NAWL’s intervention before the Supreme Court of Canada will take place on Thursday, March 26. NAWL will be represented by Kerri Froc, Suzanne Zaccour and Amanda Therrien. NAWL thanks National Steering Committee members Vrinda Narain and Cheryl Milne for their expert support.

 Read NAWL’s factum