Days after an Ontario law that opened past adoption records went into effect, a judge has quashed it.

The legislation, which took effect Monday after years in the making, allowed birth parents and adoptees to access information about each other, but an Ontario Superior Court ruling Wednesday struck it down.

Civil rights lawyer Clayton Ruby launched a constitutional challenge to the Adoption Information Disclosure Act last year on behalf of four Ontario residents — three adoptees and one parent.

He argued that privacy is an individual right and it is not the role of government to decide what information should be released.

Superior Court Justice Edward Belobaba agreed, saying the act breaches the guarantee to individual privacy enshrined in Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

"I have come to this conclusion after much deliberation," Belobaba wrote in his 68-page ruling. "No judge takes lightly his or her responsibility as a 'constitutional umpire.' "

Disclosure veto missing

Ruby and Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian said at a news conference that they had both urged the government to amend the legislation to allow birth parents and adoptees to file a "disclosure veto" that would allow them to retain their anonymity.

British Columbia, Alberta, and Newfoundland and Labrador, which have similar laws to the short-lived Ontario one, each have such a "disclosure veto."

Denbigh Patton, one of the individuals represented by Ruby, was relieved by the court ruling.

"The government can't give out my name until someone asks me, and if I say no, they can't give it out period. For an adoptee, that's everything," Patton said.

But for former MPP Marilyn Churley, who spent the past decade fighting for the scrapped disclosure law, the ruling brought disappointment.

She gave her son up for adoption after a teenage pregnancy. Though she eventually managed to connect with him, Churley has long fought for adoption records to be opened so others could more easily do the same.

"This is not about opening up records to the public. It's about opening up records to the parties involved," Churley said.