The Supreme Court has upheld the right of provincial law societies to reject the graduates of a proposed Christian law school over its requirement that students abstain from sex outside of heterosexual marriage.

In a highly anticipated contest between religious freedom and equality, most of the court said the limit on religious freedom was a minor one – well short of “forced apostasy,” as five of the judges put it. By comparison, the effects on equality, if the school had been accredited, would have been large enough to threaten the integrity of the legal system, the judges said.

The court had been asked whether the law societies of British Columbia and Ontario were within their rights when they voted not to give licences to graduates of Trinity Western University’s proposed law school at its campus in Langley, B.C. In a pair of 7-2 rulings, the court said they were.

“Limiting access to membership in the legal profession on the basis of personal characteristics, unrelated to merit, is inherently inimical to the integrity of the legal profession,” five of the seven judges in the majority wrote.

The ruling means the law school will probably never open its doors, as long as it insists on keeping its “community covenant” – an agreement prohibiting its students from sexual intimacy outside of heterosexual marriage. (Same-sex marriage is legal throughout Canada.)

B.C.’s Ministry of Advanced Education had withdrawn its preliminary approval of the school when the province’s law society refused to accredit it. On Friday, it said in an e-mail that the Supreme Court ruling “appears consistent with our government’s values.”

The school indicated on Friday that it may reconsider the wording of the covenant.

“We will review the community covenant, I’m sure,” Earl Phillips, executive director of the proposed law school, told The Globe and Mail. He called the court’s decision a major setback for religious freedom. Read more via Globe and Mail