A former Alberta Catholic School Board trustee who was forced to resign over social media posts about gender issues is asking the courts to review the school board’s decision to remove her from her position.
The Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools (RDCRS) voted in November to disqualify trustee Monique LaGrange from her position after they said she did not adhere to a board-imposed sanction to avoid posting on social media about gender ideology.
Ms. LaGrange’s lawyer, James Kitchen, has filed two applications for judicial review with the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta against RDCRS.
The applications ask the court to quash the school board’s decision and to reinstate Ms. LaGrange to her trustee position.
“She cares deeply about the type of work that [she does] as a trustee,” Mr. Kitchen told The Epoch Times.
He explained that the provincial Education Act had recently been updated and allowed school boards to force out trustees.
“The Education Act, the new one, has a provision in it that allows a school board to disqualify a trustee,” Mr. Kitchen said. “The truly unprecedented part of this case is this is the first time a school board in Alberta has invoked that section of the Education Act to kick somebody off the board.”
Mr. Kitchen is also arguing that the sanctions against Ms. LaGrange were invalid, inappropriate, or disproportionate, according to TDF.
Sanctions and Resignation
In an Aug. 30 social media post, Ms. LaGrange posted an image of school children waving a Pride flag alongside a photo of children waving a Nazi flag. The caption said “brainwashing is brainwashing.”The board voted Sept. 26 to sanction Ms. LaGrange. The sanctions included sensitivity training she had to pay for and barred her from making public statements or speaking with the media. She was also prohibited from representing the board in any official capacity and was supposed to avoid speaking about the LGBT community.
Prior to this decision, Ms. LaGrange had participated in a media interview that was not published until after the sanctions had been implemented.
Ms. LaGrange also posted a news article about a children’s book author who says they identify as “non-binary,” and said that “parental rights really anger me.” She also posted another meme, which had an image of a wolf wearing colourful makeup with a caption that read, “I just want to read some books to your chickens,” according to the court filings.
The board then forced her to resign in November after they said she was not qualified to remain in her position as a trustee because she had violated some of the sanctions.
It’s a move that Mr. Kitchen said was unusual given the actions of Ms. LaGrange.
“Usually when school board trustees are kicked off the school board it’s because they’re abusing their position or there’s a conflict of interest or they messed around with money or they’ve done something scandalous,” he said.
“Community means people, and I don’t speak about the people because everybody’s God’s child,“ she said. ”So I don’t speak negatively about people but about ideologies and agendas—I definitely have an opinion about that.”
She also said she was disappointed in the board’s actions.
“I thought freedom was being able to elect who we wanted in these positions,” she said. “But apparently, if the elected has the wrong idea, you can get rid of them now.”
