Articles 2020

In a recent award, an arbitrator found that Toronto District School Board was not required to reimburse costs that education workers incurred when they were required to work remotely due to the pandemic.

This article reviews evidence that police presence in schools can have a harmful impact on marginalized students, including the recent Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario decision in JKB v Peel (Police Services Board).

The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario recently released new resources to help both education professionals and children understand privacy and access law in Ontario.

Here’s a quick look at news and resources related to education law that made headlines in the past few months.

You are invited to participate in a survey on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on access to legal services and the legal profession in Ontario.

As the outgoing Chair of the OBA’s Education Law Section, I’d like to thank you for your support of and participation in our Section this past year, despite the impacts of the pandemic on our professional and personal lives.

In a recent decision, the Court of Appeal for Ontario found that the University of Waterloo discriminated against a student applicant on the basis of disability in refusing admission. The decision provides helpful insight into how educational institutions can meet the substantive and procedural aspects of the duty to accommodate in their student admission processes.

A school board was recently found vicariously liable for historical sexual abuse that the plaintiff was subjected to by her high school teacher.

Important legislative amendments to provisions of the federal Divorce Act, RSC 1985, c 3 (2nd Supp) took effect on March 1, 2021. These amendments were made through Bill C-78 and were originally scheduled to come into force on July 1, 2020; however, the Government of Canada deferred the effective date to March 1, 2021 due to the extraordinary circumstances related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Longueépée v. University of Waterloo, 2020 ONCA 830, the Ontario Court of Appeal held that the University of Waterloo had discriminated against Roch Longueépée when it refused him admission on the basis of his previous grades, which were the result of undiagnosed and unaccommodated disabilities. This decision is significant not only for its contribution to human rights jurisprudence, but also for how it applies the administrative law principles set out by the Supreme Court in Vavilov.