Discrimination

The Supreme Court of Canada holds that the Government of British Columbia's aerobic standard used to test the fitness of forest firefighters discriminates on the basis of sex, and further that the Government failed to show that the discriminatory standard is justified as a bona fide occupational requirement ("BFOR").

This case arose as a grievance before a labour arbitrator. Tawney Meiorin was employed for three years as a member of the Initial Attack Forest Firefighting crew. Although she did her work well, she lost her job when the Government adopted a new series of fitness tests for forest firefighters. She passed three of the tests but failed a fourth one, a 2.5 km run designed to assess whether she met the Government's aerobic standards, by taking 49.4 seconds longer than required.

The arbitrator found that the aerobic standard constituted adverse effect discrimination based on sex because men as a group have a higher aerobic capacity than women, and...

This is the first decision by the Supreme Court of Canada interpreting s. 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is an appeal by the Law Society of British Columbia from a decision of the B.C. Court of Appeal which found that the requirement that lawyers be Canadian citizens violated s. 15 of the Charter.

Mark David Andrews met all the requirements for admission to the British Columbia bar except that he was not a Canadian citizen. When he was refused admission, he challenged the citizenship requirement on the grounds that it violated his right to equality.

McIntyre J., writing the majority decision on the interpretation of s. 15, finds that discrimination is a distinction which imposes disadvantages because of the personal characteristics of an individual or group. Also, the impact of a law on groups, not simply the law's purpose, must be taken into account when considering whether violations of s. 15 have occurred.

The...

The Supreme Court of Canada allows an appeal by the Ontario Human Rights Commission and Theresa O'Malley from the Ontario Court of Appeal ruling which found that O'Malley was not discriminated against because of her religion when her full-time employment was terminated because she refused to work Friday evenings and Saturdays. O'Malley’s religion (Seventh-Day Adventist) required strict observance of the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.

The Supreme Court of Canada, in a unanimous judgment, finds that O'Malley was discriminated against because of creed.

The Court finds that it is not necessary to prove that discrimination was intentional to find that a violation of human rights legislation has occurred. An employment rule, neutral on its face and honestly made, can have discriminatory effects. It is the result or the effect of an act which is important in determining whether discrimination has occurred.

Where an employment rule has a...