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.
What’s next
The Divisional Court reserved its decision. This means we will not know the result of the case until the court releases written reasons. We will provide an update once the decision is released.
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.