Mennonite Weekly Review

TORONTO — A group of Hutterites in Alberta lost a bid to be issued special driver’s licenses without photographs.

The Supreme Court of Canada on July 24 ruled to uphold provincial rules making a digital photo mandatory.

Two Alberta Hutterite colonies had argued for an exemption for religious reasons, claiming that being photographed violates the Second Commandment, which prohibits graven images.

Combating identity theft “is a pressing and important public goal,” Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote for the majority in the 4-3 decision, and trumps religious beliefs.

Hutterites in Alberta had been exempt from having their photographs appear on licenses since 1974. Starting in 2003, however, the provincial government mandated that every driver would have to have his or her photograph entered into a central database.

In 2003, Alberta offered to let Hutterite drivers continue to use special licenses without photos, but said they had to be photographed for inclusion in its security database. The Hutterites refused, and two lower courts agreed that their religious beliefs were being violated.

Lawyers for the sect argued that Alberta presented no evidence to show that not having a photograph on a license constitutes a security threat. But federal lawyers argued an exemption for Hutterites could increase the risk of identity theft.

The three dissenting judges said the security benefit of mandatory photos is slight compared to the impact on the Hutterites’ religious beliefs.

The Hutterites were among Anabaptists who fled from Russia, going to the United States in the late 1800s and to Canada in 1918. Today, they number about 30,000 in Canada.

In the wake of the ruling, some Hutterites are considering leaving Alberta.

“I hope it doesn’t come to that point, but we are discussing that right now,” Samuel Wurz, manager of the Three Hills Hutterite colony northeast of Calgary, told the Globe and Mail newspaper.