Quebec’s Court of Appeal has upheld a landmark 2022 decision that found a law permitting random traffic stops by police led to racial profiling.
The province’s high court agreed with a Superior Court ruling that declared inoperative an article of the province’s Highway Safety Code that allows police to randomly stop drivers without a reasonable suspicion that an offence has been committed.
The Court of Appeal says in the unanimous decision released Wednesday that the law violates Charter rights, including freedom from arbitrary detention and equality rights.
The legal action was brought by Joseph-Christopher Luamba, a 22-year-old Black Montrealer who said he had been stopped by Quebec police nearly a dozen times without reason, and none of the stops resulted in a ticket.
Superior Court Justice Michel Yergeau wrote in the October 2022 decision that “racial profiling does exist. It is not a laboratory-constructed abstraction … It is a reality …