Case Comment - Moore v British Columbia (Education)

In this appeal from a decision of the Court of Appeal of British Columbia, the Supreme Court of Canada addressed the question of whether the BC Human Rights Code provisions respecting discrimination required the provision of special educational assistance for learning disabled children. Moore's son had been receiving support from a Diagnostic Centre until it was eliminated by the school board due to budgetary requirements.

The BC Human Rights Code requires that all publicly available services shall not be denied to a person on the basis of a prohibited ground. The BC Human Rights Tribunal found that the appropriate comparator group for the purposes of discrimination analysis was the non-disabled children in his class. On application for judicial review, the BC Supreme Court disagreed with that position and found that the appropriate comparator group would be other learning disabled children. That decision was upheld on appeal.