Brandon church part of Supreme Court appeal
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/10/2023 (1111 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
A Brandon church is one of five churches continuing to fight a legal battle against provincial COVID-19 public health orders.
The Bible Baptist Church — on Fourth Street in Brandon — is named, along with a minister, a deacon and a restrictions protester, in an application that was filed last month to the Supreme Court of Canada requesting that Canada’s highest court grant an appeal of their case.
“We hope that the Supreme Court of Canada agrees that constitutional issues surrounding closing churches and curbing outdoor protests during a pandemic are worth the Court’s attention and adjudication,” Allison Pejovic, the lawyer representing the group, stated in a Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms press release.
The application argues that public health orders unreasonably infringed on the group’s Charter right to religious worship, claiming that some groups and businesses were permitted to remain operating while the province closed churches.
The Sun spoke with a caretaker for the Bible Baptist Church who confirmed that the Brandon church is part of the application to the Supreme Court. The four other churches named in the lawsuit are Gateway Bible Baptist Church (Thompson), Pembina Valley Baptist Church (Winkler), Grace Covenant Church (Altona) and Slavic Baptist Church (Morden).
The church declined to comment on the application. But the caretaker the Sun spoke with said that the Bible Baptist Church does not currently have a pastor. According to the church’s website, the pastor of the church, John Reeves, died in 2016.
The Bible Baptist Church in Brandon is not listed on the federal database of registered Canadian charities.
The case was first heard in May 2021 in Manitoba Court of King’s Bench, where the churches argued that public health orders in 2020 and 2021 that temporarily closed in-person religious services and later re-opened them with caps on attendance violated their Charter rights.
Chief Justice Glenn Joyal ruled that while the public health orders did restrict the Charter rights of freedom of religion and freedom of peaceful assembly, they were constitutionally justifiable limits as a pandemic response based on scientific evidence.
The churches appealed Joyal’s decision on multiple grounds, including that sections of the Public Health Act were unconstitutional, the restrictions were not constitutionally justifiable, and that the public health orders did not comply with the Public Health Act.
Last June, the Manitoba Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal on all grounds and upheld Joyal’s ruling, asserting that the COVID-19 public health orders placing restrictions on in-person church services was constitutional.
» gmortfield@brandonsun.com
» X: @geena_mortfield