The Democracy Fund (TDF) will be working with lawyer James Kitchen to represent former Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools (RDCRS) trustee Monique LaGrange as she fights her removal. Kitchen filed two applications for judicial review, challenging the RDCRS’s decision to penalize LaGrange and disqualify her from sitting on it, according to a Wednesday press release. TDF said Kitchen has filed his briefs, which lay out in detail how the RDCRS’s decisions were unfair and unreasonable and should be overturned by the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta. RDCRS trustees voted three to one in November to kick LaGrange off of the school board over a meme she posted on Instagram insulting Pride Month.READ MORE: UPDATED: Controversial Red Deer trustee Monique LaGrange removed“A fellow trustee submitted a second complaint that Monique had violated the Trustee Code of Conduct (and the September 26 Motion the Board passed to discipline her for her earlier posting of the ‘brainwashing and brainwashing’ meme) by speaking to the media (specifically Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson and Talk Truth) about what the Board did and about gender ideology,” said Kitchen. “I was her lawyer throughout the hearing of this second complaint.”TDF went on to say the two judicial reviews will be heard virtually by a Red Deer judge over the course of a three-day hearing from May 1 to 3 starting at 2:00 PM on the first day. It encouraged people to attend by accessing the link to it. In Alberta, judicial reviews are heard on the basis of a record of documents compiled and submitted to the court by the decision-maker, which is supposed to include every item presented to it at the time the decision was made. In this case, LaGrange had submitted to the RDCRS 33 pages of emails and letters from Albertans who supported her. At first, TDF said it failed to provide these supportive emails and letters to the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta, but that changed when Kitchen filed an application to compel it to do so. LaGrange was elected to the RDCRS in 2021. Despite this, it expelled her because she allegedly failed to comply with sanctions imposed on her by it in September for posting a meme to her Instagram story some people found offensive.It asked her to apologize for the meme, which she declined to do because she believed she was right. “I was elected to stand up and protect our children, and that is what I am doing,” she said. It ordered her to undergo sensitivity training at her own expense for allegedly breaching the code of conduct by posting the meme and to refrain from making public comments about sexual minorities in her official capacity as a trustee.While LaGrange is controversial, TDF said it and Kitchen chose to defend her to defend the free speech of all Canadians, especially in the context of statements made by elected representatives.TDF said in December it was pursuing legal action against the RDCRS over LaGrange’s expulsion. READ MORE: Democracy Fund challenges Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools' board decision to expel Trustee LaGrangeShe faced expulsion after allegedly failing to comply with sanctions imposed for posting the meme on her Instagram account. The meme featured two side-by-side photographs — one depicting children holding swastika flags and the other featuring children holding Progress Pride ones. The caption accompanying the meme read “Brainwashing is brainwashing.”
