Legal community watching case closely
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/05/2009 (5055 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Legal community
watching case closely
LEGAL experts across the country are closely watching a custody case involving two children seized by Manitoba social services over allegations their parents taught them to hate minorities.
Family and constitutional law professors say racist parents can’t lose custody of their children simply due to their beliefs. But if those beliefs are so extreme they promote violence and hatred, the court can seize the children.
The mother has denied being a neo-Nazi and has called herself simply a “proud Scottish chick.”
It’s believed to be the first child custody case in Canada involving white-supremacists beliefs.
Nicholas Bala, a family law professor at Queen’s University, says society has a broad range of acceptable political and religious beliefs.
But courts can intervene when the beliefs cause harm, he says. Jehovah’s Witnesses’ children have been apprehended because their parents refused to allow life-saving blood transfusions. Girls who face religious female genital mutilation have also been seized.
— The Canadian Press
