O'Donohue v. Canada

O'Donohue v Canada was a legal challenge to the exclusion of Roman Catholics from the throne of Canada. The applicant sought a declaratory judgment that certain provisions of the Act of Settlement 1701 violate the equality-rights section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In 2003 the Ontario Superior Court of Justice dismissed the case, finding the matter non-justiciable. In 2005 that decision was upheld on appeal.

The application was brought by Tony O'Donohue, a civil engineer, former Toronto City Councillor and member of Citizens for a Canadian Republic, after over two decades of pursuing reform of the succession by constitutional amendment.

Currently Canada's head of state is Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada; a legally distinct position from the Queen of the United Kingdom, though embodied in the same person. As a sovereign nation, Canada is free to alter its own laws, but its Constitution includes the 1931 Statute of Westminster, which set out the convention that all of the Commonwealth realms must have symmetrical lines of succession to the throne, to maintain the unity of the Crown. Thus the constitutional law that predominantly governs the line of succession to the throne, the 1701 Act of Settlement, must remain identical to the same law in the other realms, including the United Kingdom. The Act of Settlement, in turn, forbids Catholics from becoming King or Queen of Canada.

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