SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - The Yellowknife Catholic School Board's fight to keep non-Catholics from acting as trustees on its school board has ended after the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the appeal Thursday.

"The board acknowledges that a person may serve as a Catholic school trustee if they are a declared supporter of the Catholic School Board and duly elected," said Mary Vane, board chair for Yellowknife Catholic Schools. "The courts have spoken."

The decision means the ruling of the NWT appeal court on Dec. 18, 2008, which found no legal reason to bar non-Catholics from the school board, will be in effect.

The board lost its first legal battle to keep non-Catholics from being elected to the board of trustees in May 2007. Amy Hacala, the board of trustees' only non-Catholic member, was first elected in October 2003 and re-elected in 2006.

"I'm thrilled. I'm happy it's finally over with," Hacala said of Thursdays' ruling. "It's an affirmation of the right of all stakeholders to sit on the board."

She also took to her blog to express her feelings on the decision, writing, "The highest court in the land has confirmed the right I have been fighting for over the last three-and-a-half years. It is a TREMENDOUS feeling. I am thrilled!"

Hacala said she will again be pushing for removal of religious requirements from promotional and informational materials from Yellowknife Catholic School Board's election nomination packages. She originally raised the motion on Feb. 24, which was denied by the board.

Vane said the policy is looked at by the board on a continual basis and isn't changed "on a whim."

"We will in the coming year be looking at our policies as we do every year," she said.

Martin Goldney, legal council for the GNWT Department of Justice, argued on behalf of the attorney general of the NWT that the rights of the Catholic schools, or the right of any denominational school in the NWT, are "not constitutionally entrenched and subject to equality guarantees."

"We acted throughout on (the attorney general's) behalf," he said of the department's role in the appeal.

Goldney said the case is confirmation to the GNWT that "denominational school rights in the NWT are more inclusive, that there is no requirement that school trustees need be Catholic."