(LifeSiteNews) — In the wake of the $750,000 BC Human Rights Tribunal judgment against former public school trustee Barry Neufeld for his public opposition to gender ideology, trustee Laurie Throness of Chilliwack School Board District 33 announced his resignation on February 26, “effective immediately.” Throness is also a former member of the BC Legislative Assembly.

“I can no longer do my job,” said Throness, who is a Christian. “All democratically elected officials must feel comfortable to speak their mind without worrying about accusations of workplace discrimination. Since I no longer feel safe in expressing myself on the Board in legitimate ways, the only proper course is to resign.”

“If a person elects not to ‘believe’ that gender identity is separate from sex assigned at birth, then they do not ‘believe’ in transpeople. This is a form of existential denial,” the BC Human Rights Tribunal stated in the ruling.

“A person does not need to believe in Christianity to accept that another person is Christian. However, to accept that a person is transgender, one must accept that their gender identity is different than their sex assigned at birth.”

In a February 26 press release posted to his Facebook page, Throness said that his decision to resign came “after reading last week’s Human Rights Tribunal judgment against Barry Neufeld, which laid upon him a massive fine of $750,000 (plus interest) to be paid to an unknown number of individuals estimated statistically to be in the District.”

In a February 24 interview, Neufeld stated that there is no way he could ever pay the fine.

Throness stated that “while the Tribunal judgment expresses support for freedom of speech, there is a fine line between speech that falls afoul of the Human Rights Code and speech that doesn’t.”

Few are qualified to make such subtle legal distinctions, particularly in the heat of public debate, and since no trustee wants to undergo a legal ordeal followed by a devastating fine such as Neufeld did, no one will dare, in any school board across the Province, to remark on sensitive topics like gender or inclusivity, even when a trustee feels it would be in the public interest to do so.

READ: Former Canadian school trustee ordered to pay $750k for saying there are only two genders

“The effect of the judgment is clear; it is a warning and a threat that places an absolute-zero chill upon public discourse and the freedom of speech of elected trustees,” Throness added. “While affirming the freedom of speech on paper, the result of the Tribunal’s decision is to destroy it. For example, in the wake of Tumbler Ridge, I wanted to call for the suspension of SOGI as a teaching resource until an inquest could determine whether it had an impact in exacerbating a young person’s mental illness, but I felt I couldn’t do that as a trustee – so I’m doing it now.”

Throness noted that public school trustees should be able to exercise their freedom of speech without fear, accountable only to the voters.

“Just as BC’s Legislature regulates the speech of its members through its Standing Orders, and voters decide the fate of MLAs at election time, so elected school boards and other elected bodies should be able to make similar judgments upon the speech of their own members, and have those members stand or fall before their own voters,” he said.

“I call upon the BC Legislature to affirm the freedom of speech upon which democracy relies, and pass a bill placing the speech of school board trustees, municipal councilors and regional district directors outside the purview of the Tribunal.”

A bill put forward in the BC Legislature in response to the Neufeld ruling on February 26 to repeal the BC Human Rights Code by Kelowna MLA Tara Armstrong was voted down.

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According to the CBC, Chilliwack board of education chair David Swankey called Throness “a valuable voice that advocated for academic excellence,” and stated that his seat will be left vacant until October’s municipal election.

The resignation of Laurie Throness emphasizes the chilling effect of the BC Human Rights Tribunal’s staggeringly high judgment against Barry Neufeld, which appears deliberately designed for precisely that purpose. Throness, who previously served as a BC Liberal, has faced criticism for his Christian views before – an NDP MLA called for his removal from the Liberal caucus in 2020 for his alleged “anti-LGBTQ views” ­– but this time, the potential cost of expressing Christian views in public capacity has been judged too high.

With Throness’s resignation, that cost has just gotten higher.