Supreme Court Won’t Hear Jordan Peterson’s Social Media Training Appeal

Author, media commentator, and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson addresses the 5th Demographic Summit in the Fine Arts Museum in Budapest on Sept. 14, 2023. Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty Images

Canada’s highest court has dismissed Jordan Peterson’s legal challenge of an order to undergo remedial social media training or potentially lose his licence to practise psychology in Ontario.

As is customary, the Supreme Court of Canada’s Aug. 8 decision did not explain why the court declined to hear Peterson’s case which it “dismissed with costs.”

Peterson, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto in psychology, took to social media Aug. 8 to weigh in on the Supreme Court’s decision.

“I am now bereft of options on the legal front in Canada,” he wrote. “I guess it’s on with the show.”

Peterson was appealing a 2022 order from the College of Psychologists of Ontario (CPO) that he undergo a social media training program on professionalism in making public statements. The order was issued after the governing body received complaints about some of Peterson’s social media posts.

The college alleged some of his posts directed at a plus-sized model, transgender actor Elliot Page, and several politicians may be “degrading” to the profession and could amount to professional misconduct.

The well-known author has refuted the college’s assertions, saying his comments were not expressed in his professional capacity as a clinical psychologist. While Peterson has been a registered member of the CPO since 1999, he has not seen any patients since 2017, according to court documents.

Peterson said the Supreme Court decision will subject him to “indefinite re-education” for “publicly opposing the butchers and liars subjecting children to sterilization and mutilation.”

Howard Levitt, the lawyer representing Peterson called the court’s decision “a tragedy for freedom of speech in this country.”

He told The Epoch Times via email that his client will undergo the training as ordered.

“It seems ironic, even tragic, that he, one of the most adept persons  in social media in this country and beyond, is going to attend ’reeducation' from people inherently less skilled and knowledgeable than he is himself,” he wrote.

The CPO has not responded to requests for comment.

Legal Battles

Peterson filed for a judicial review in June of 2023, but his application was dismissed last August when the Ontario Divisional Court upheld the CPO training order.

Peterson appealed the ruling, but the Ontario Court of Appeal in January rejected his request to quash the decision of the lower court.

Mr. Peterson, in a Jan. 17 column, promised not only to dive into the social media training prescribed by the CPO, but to “publicize every single bit of it.”

Peterson rose to fame through his YouTube lectures, his successful self-help book, “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos,” and his opposition to the federal government’s Bill C-16, which added the protection of gender identity and expression to the Human Rights Code and Criminal Code.

Peterson’s Twitter account was temporarily suspended for his comments on Elliot Page, but it was reinstated by Elon Musk after he purchased the social media platform in 2022.