Seoul council moves to repeal student rights ordinance for the second time

The Seoul Metropolitan City Council on Tuesday passed a motion to abolish the city’s student rights ordinance for the second time, moving to repeal the order on students’ protection from discrimination based on sex, religion, family structure, gender identity and sexual orientation.

The motion was approved at a plenary session with the support of 65 out of 86 members.

A nearly identical bill was pushed through the council in 2024 by the conservative People Power Party, which holds a majority of seats in the chamber. At the time, then-Seoul Superintendent Jo Hee-yeon, a liberal, filed for a temporary injunction to halt the bill’s enforcement — a request the Supreme Court accepted.

The top court’s final decision on the legitimacy of the initial vote is still pending.

The bill was reintroduced to the council's education committee in November as a Municipal Ordinance Requested by Residents — a civilian-initiated measure that must be processed within one year, extendable by an additional year. First proposed in 2023, the petition garnered more than 25,000 signatures from Seoul residents.

Council Speaker Choi Ho-jung said resident-requested ordinances are not discarded even if council members’ terms expire, adding that the bill was therefore eligible for a plenary vote and was placed on the agenda after careful deliberation.

First introduced in 2012, the Seoul Student Human Rights Ordinance and its abolishment have become the center of an ongoing ideological clash, with conservatives arguing it overly protects students, limits teachers’ authority and promotes protections for sexual minorities in schools.

Courts have previously upheld the ordinance as being legitimate. In 2018 and 2019, the Seoul Administrative Court and the Constitutional Court ruled in favor of maintaining the law, citing its role in “limiting discriminatory hate speech, fostering democratic civic values and cultivating human rights awareness.”

However, controversy rekindled in 2023, after the suicide of a teacher at Seoul’s Seoi Elementary School ignited calls to strengthen protections for teachers who argued that the ordinance left them vulnerable to abuse.

Following Tuesday’s vote, Seoul Superintendent of Education Jung Geun-sik, who opposed the repeal, said he will formally request reconsideration by the council. If so, the council would be required to convene another plenary session to vote again on the bill.

“The council is forcefully pushing to abolish the Student Human Rights Ordinance despite it being under judicial review and despite its enforcement having been temporarily suspended by the Supreme Court,” Jung said to reporters. “This is a waste of administrative power and will cause serious confusion and harm in school settings due to political logic.”

“I strongly condemn the vote,” he added.