On February 20, 2025, the Divisional Court of Ontario released a decision in Bokhari v. Top Medical Transportation Services, 2026 ONSC 1073 with significant implications for individuals with claims before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.
The Human Rights Tribunal has struggled in recent years with a significant backlog of cases. In 2021, the Tribunal adopted a new protocol for “jurisdictional screening” that lowered the standard for dismissing an application without a hearing. Thousands of complaints have been screened out on this basis since then, without an oral hearing and without evidence.
A judicial review to Divisional Court, led by lawyers from Don Valley Community Legal Services (Richa Oza), the Income Security Advocacy Centre (Nabila F. Qureshi), and the Clinic Resource Office (Anna Rosenbluth), challenged this practice. The Tribunal decision before the Court had dismissed a discrimination complaint without an oral hearing because the Tribunal’s view was that the complaint was “outside of its jurisdiction” to consider.
The applicant, Mr. Bokhari, was fired after requesting time off due to an injury. He applied to the Tribunal asserting that this constituted discrimination on the basis of disability. However, the Tribunal held that his impairment was not a disability because it was only temporary. It then found that the application was outside of its jurisdiction because the applicant was not disabled, so no oral hearing was required. It made these findings without any evidence.
In a major win for the applicant and for the many individuals who rely on the Human Rights Tribunal to adjudicate fairly, the Divisional Court overturned the Tribunal’s decision, finding that the Tribunal had engaged in a “disguised merits review” and that the issue of whether Mr. Bokhari had a disability should have been determined at an oral hearing.
The Divisional Court decision makes three important determinations. Firstly, it rejects the Tribunal’s practice of using its jurisdictional screening process to dismiss applications on their merits without an oral hearing. Second, it rejects the Tribunal’s use of the “balance of probabilities” standard to assess whether an application falls within its jurisdiction. Finally, it re-affirms that the assessment of what constitutes a disability includes the perceptions and barriers that an individual faces, and not just their physical limitations.
The Court also found that the Tribunal should have assessed whether a matter was within its jurisdiction using a “plain and obvious” standard, rather than on a “balance of probabilities.” The decision removes a significant access to justice hurdle for applicants at the Tribunal. The decision may also be applicable to other administrative tribunals in Ontario, serving as a warning to avoid compromising the rights of litigants over early dismissals.
History of the case
On November 24, 2025, ISAC appeared before the Divisional Court of Ontario in Bokhari v. Top Medical Transportation Services and Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. Together with the Clinic Resource Office and Don Valley Community Legal Services, ISAC represented a worker, Ali Bokhari, who was fired from his job because of his disability.
In 2021, Mr. Bokhari filed a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. His complaint alleged that his former employer had discriminated against him on the basis of disability. However, the Tribunal dismissed the complaint at a very early stage because it decided that Mr. Bokhari’s condition was not a “disability” under the Human Rights Code. As a result, the Tribunal stated that it did not have the “jurisdiction” or authority to consider his complaint.
ISAC and its co-counsel teamed up to challenge the Tribunal’s decision, and brought an application for judicial review at the Divisional Court.
Why this matters
As part of the judicial review, we argued that there were several serious problems with the Tribunal’s approach when it dismissed Mr. Bokhari’s complaint:
- The Tribunal determined that Mr. Bokhari did not have a disability without the benefit of any evidence, testimony, or an oral hearing that is required under the Human Rights Code.
- The Tribunal applied a “balance of probabilities” standard to decide whether it had jurisdiction to hear the case. This was unfair to Mr. Bokhari because the “balance of probabilities” standard is usually used to assess evidence – but Mr. Bokhari had not yet had any chance to provide evidence.
- The Tribunal had failed to notify Mr. Bokhari that it was going to decide whether or not he had a disability. He didn’t know he was required to prove this, so the Tribunal violated his right to procedural fairness.
- And finally, the Tribunal applied the wrong legal test to decide whether Mr. Bokhari’s condition was a disability.
Mr. Bokhari’s case is not unique. Since 2021, the Human Rights Tribunal has dismissed hundreds of cases like his at a preliminary stage, without an oral hearing, on the basis that they were outside the Tribunal’s “jurisdiction” to consider. However, what the Tribunal really appears to be doing is a disguised pre-determination of the merits of cases, without an oral hearing or any evidence. This hurts vulnerable people and erodes the protections of the Human Rights Code. Many organizations and people have raised the alarm about the Tribunal’s troubling approach, including Tribunal Watch Ontario, and the former Chief Commissioner of the Human Rights Commission, Raj Anand.
Mr. Bokhari’s case raises issues that could have a broad impact on many different people. For that reason, five different organizations intervened in his case to explain to the court how the Tribunal’s approach is hurting marginalized communities: the Ontario Human Rights Commission, Human Rights Legal Support Centre, Black Legal Action Centre, ARCH Disability Law Centre, and a Migrant Workers Coalition. ISAC is grateful for their excellent submissions to the Divisional Court.
ISAC Staff Lawyer Nabila F. Qureshi worked on this case, together with Anna Rosenbluth from the Clinic Resource Office and Richa Oza from Don Valley Community Legal Services.