Attorney General of Canada v. Lavell | The Brian Mulroney Institute of Government

Canada (AG) v Lavell was a landmark 5-4 Supreme Court of Canada decision that found Section 12 of the Indian Act did not violate the respondent's right to "equality before the law" under Section 1 of the Canadian Bill of Rights.
This case came about when Jeannette Vivian Corbiere, an Anishinaabe (Ojibwa) woman from the Wikwemikong Unceded Indian Reserve on Manitoulin Island, married a non-Indigenous man from Toronto, Ontario.
Due to Section 12(1)(b) of the Indian Act, which revoked the Indian status of women who marry non-status men, Jeanette lost her Indian status, which also meant that her children would not receive status either.
This policy was not applicable to Indigenous men and it essentially worked to further force assimilation, disenfranchisement, and discrimination against Indigenous women.
Jeanette filed a lawsuit claiming that this Article and the federal government were in violation of the Canadian Bill of Rights because the policy discriminated against her sex.
The federal courts ultimately found that the Bill of Rights did not make s. 12 of the Indian Act inoperative.
There were some mixed reactions with this decision, some viewed it as the government and the justice system's failure to protect and uphold Indigenous women's rights and some thought if this section was rendered inoperative, the court's could go further and strike down the entire Indian Act.
It is generally understood that this case was a setback for Indigenous rights, however, it also acted as a catalyst for greated Indigenous rights activism and a precursor to changed in Canadian law, which saw the revision of the Indian Act (1985) and other changes to discriminatory policies against Indigenous peoples.

Citation

Attorney General of Canada v. Lavell [1974] S.C.R. 1349, 1973. https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/5261/index.do