Sunday, October 17, 2010

Court says University sanction over Facebook postings violated Charter

Canadian court in Alberta ruled against U of Calgary for violating its students freedom of expression when it sanctioned the students for posting critical comments about a professor on Facebook. One of the issues here is whether the the Charter of rights applies to universities (as this is a constitutional right and only applies to government but not private entities). The court ruled that the university is not a Charter free zone and further decided that the students' Charter rights were infringed.


In particular, at paragraph 82 of the judgment, the court comments about the value of the critical comments made by the students:

"I cannot accept that expression in the form of criticism of one's profession must be restricted in order to accomplish the objective of maintaining an appropriate learning environments. I do not regard this particular kind of expression as being of little value. Students should not be prevented from expressing critical opinions regarding the subject matter or quality of the teaching they are receiving. As an educational institution, the University should expect and encourage frank and critical discussion regarding the teaching ability of professors amongst students, even in instances where the comments exchanged are unfavourable...[omitted]"

Here is a copy of the judgment:
http://btdbowman.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/reasons-for-judgment2.pdf

Basically, the Judge treated Facebook Wall as a forum for discussion, thus, a place for expressing ideas. The Judge also mentioned that to object the critics the professor should bring a civil action (if she considers the comments as defamation), not just have the school sanctioned the students for making negative comments.
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2 comments:

  1. JohnOctober 18, 2010 at 1:43 PM

    I'm a little confused as to how the University could make the argument that the Charter did not apply to universities. Granted, I'm not Canadian so maybe there are tenets of the Charter that I'm unfamiliar with, but doesn't the Charter guarantee that "everyone has the following fundamental freedoms" and includes "freedom of thought, belief, opinion, and expression"?

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  2. JocelynOctober 18, 2010 at 10:17 PM

    Charter of rights are the rights granted to individuals against the government and are constitutional rights. The Constitution states what powers the government has and to what extent - the government by all means should not limit any rights specified in the Constitution, either by making or modifying new or existing laws/regulations/by-laws or whatever policy. It's the ultimate guide in a democratic legal system. Therefore, only if the university in some way acts as a delegate, represents or plays some function of the government would it be bound by the Constitution.

    Any rights infringed by a private entity are regulated under civil or criminal laws (torts, contract, criminal laws etc). Thus, a company that filters or restricts their employees' Internet access may not be ethical but it's not a violation of law. But government on the other hand cannot block anyone's Internet access because the Charter of rights disallows it (unless under really extreme circumstance like involving national security or something like that, which are also guided by the Constitution).

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