School fights Quebec

In the name of neutrality, seven Supreme Court of Canada justices peered down from their red leather bench at 27 lawyers armed to the teeth with briefs and bristling with arguments in a courtroom full of spectators ripe for the legal fight.

Something seemed, you might say, a little amiss.

For as even the appellant’s lawyer acknowledged, what was playing out in the courtroom was, on its face, a small problem that less, um, neutral minds should have been able to fix with discussion and compromise.

“Loyola is not asking for the moon,” Mark Phillips said of the private Catholic Montreal school that has battled for six years to protect its religious freedoms. “Loyola is not actually asking for anything from anyone. It is just asking ‘let us be who we are.’ ”