Chosen Discrimination

The paper studies the analogous grounds under section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that most raise the concern that the complainant in equality litigation has made a choice, namely citizenship and marital status. The citizenship example comes from Lavoie v. Canada, a 2002 judgment concerning citizenship preferences in federal public employment. The paper argues that a focus on autonomy and zones of privacy – a sense of matters with which government has no business interfering – works better than the unhelpful dichotomy of things chosen and unchosen