"University of Regina Prof '… Was Not a Pretendian,' Says Judge" in Defamation Case Brought by the Professor

An interesting story from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (Candace Maracle); a brief excerpt (though the whole story is worth reading):

A Saskatchewan judge has awarded an academic $70,000 in damages, ruling she was defamed by statements that she was pretending to be Indigenous to further her career….

The ruling said the defamation was not the assertion that she was not Indigenous, but the assertions that she committed fraud, pretended to be Indigenous and relied on forged documents….

In the ruling, [Judge D.E.] Labach wrote that he did "not consider the [Algonquins of Ontario] tribunal's decision that Thomas Lagarde [the ancestor through whom Coupal had earlier been recognized as being part Algonquin] is not Indigenous and, ergo, those descended from him are not Indigenous, as mitigating in this case."

[Coupal's lawyer Paul J.] Harasen said that in 2021-2022 [the relevant time as to defendant's accusations that Coupal had engaged in "fraud"], Coupal "had every basis to reasonably rely" on AOO decisions that she was Indigenous….

Thanks to the Media Law Resource Center (MLRC) MediaLawDaily for the pointer.

 

Comments

[AmosArch]

If people can change their gender to the point where others have to be forced to play along why not their ethnic identity to the point where others have to be forced to play along?

[ReaderY]

In the US, since discrimination laws are textually identical with respect to both race and sex, and since Bostock was based on text, why wouldn’t Bostock prohibit discriminating against someone based on their indigenous-status identity?

What AmosArch said, with more legalese.

[John F. Carr]

Discrimination based on perceived identity was forbidden before Bostock. Not quite the same, but close.

[Lee Moore]

Seems reasonable assuming that all the rude things he said about her were said before the AOO came out with its revised verdict (and assuming they were assertions of fact etc.)

I can't be bothered to read the whole judgement but the CBC article is somewhat nuanced, and leads me to wonder how it would have turned out in the US of A.

eg

He said on Twitter that professor had "leveraged her ancestral relationship" to become an expert on truth and reconciliation.

This would seem to be true – if her claimed ancestral relationship advanced her career – it does not claim the leveraging was dishonest.

Leroux also referred to Coupal as "pretending to be Indigenous" in a different Twitter conversation.

We need to know whether he said this before or after the AOO dissed her , and if after, whether she persisted in her claims ?

"I suppose to hide her own fraud."

This looks very like an opinion.

Leroux said they "had no Indigenous ancestry but had built a career around their false claims through the Algonquins of Ontario and have made several millions of dollars in salaries from essentially their fraud."

A trickier one – a false claim may be a knowingly false claim, but it may instead be an unknowingly false claim.