A Nova Scotia board of inquiry has thrown out a racial profiling complaint against an electronics store after four hearing days, ruling that a salesclerk who kept a customer in view for about 15 seconds was doing exactly what the store told every employee to do with every customer.

Dr. Sherri Borden Colley, described in the decision as a well-known journalist and human rights advocate who identifies as African Nova Scotian, visited The Source in Elmsdale on March 17, 2022, for about four minutes.

A sales associate greeted her, offered help, answered a question about printer ink and kept cleaning while staying where she could see him. Store video showed he looked directly at her for roughly 15 seconds. She complained to the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission that she had been followed and treated as a presumed shoplifter because of her race, colour and sex.

Nobody accused her of shoplifting.

The Commission referred the case to a board of inquiry. Its counsel took what the decision calls a "fairly neutral" position but argued that profiling was made out through adverse-effect discrimination, on the theory that the company's "Retail Threats" document "demands employees profile customers" and so "unlocks" unconscious bias.

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Adjudicator Eric K. Slone rejected that argument. Staff had never read the Retail Threats document, he found. The policy they actually followed was a loss prevention guideline that told them to keep customers in view and expressly disclaimed any "single type of customer to identify as a shoplifter."

He wrote: "There is no evidence that he or other employees opted to keep some customers in view but not others. Such uniformity is the opposite of profiling."

The decision is blunt about the limits of the law.

"The fact that Dr. Borden Colley 'felt' that she was being profiled is not the test," read the decision. "Either there was racial profiling or there wasn't." He found "no objective basis to hold The Source or any of its employees liable" and dismissed the complaint.

No damages or costs were ordered. The Source itself ceased business in 2024, while the complaint was still pending.

Mr. Slone, a Halifax lawyer, sits as an adjudicator of the Nova Scotia Small Claims Court and was reappointed to the Commission's board-of-inquiry roster in April 2024 for a five-year term.

The decision records that he was appointed to this case on December 20, 2023, by the Chief Judge of the Provincial Court at the Commission's request.

A sensible result. But the Commission chose to send a four-minute shopping trip to a four-day hearing, and the retailer paid lawyers to defend a clerk for making eye contact. Nobody at the Commission answers to a voter for that choice.