A complaint has been filed by a transgendered substitute teacher against a Catholic school board in Canada.
Jan Buterman was a substitute teacher for St. Albert Catholic Schools in Edmonton, Alberta, before announcing that she was going through the process to become a "he." Dave Quist, executive director of the Institute of Marriage and Family - Canada, offers insight on the incident. "The Catholic school board looked at it and said that [the gender change] was – quote – 'not aligned with the teachings of the church and would create confusions and complexit[ies] with students and parents as a model and witness to Catholic faith values,'" he explains. "Therefore they removed her from the substitute teacher list." Buterman has since filed a complaint before the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal for her dismissal -- and reports that in the midst of her challenge to the Catholic school board, there are other secular schools where she might apply. She argues that public employers do not have a right to make employment decisions based on tenets of faith. Quist explains that the Catholic Church operates some public schools for the government "and receives public funds based on the number of children that they have in their classrooms -- and so they are receiving public tax dollars." In light of this, however, Quist argues that when parents sign their children up to attend a school within the Catholic school district, "they know exactly what they're going into." The outcome of the case is uncertain because of other rulings by the Tribunal that outraged many Canadians -- meaning that members might be wary of that in approaching the Buterman complaint.
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