It is a case that spans a decade, and brings together thousands of plaintiffs. In March 2018, Jamilla Clark and Arwa Aziz filed a lawsuit against the City of New York, after having both been forced the previous year by the Manhattan and Brooklyn police departments to remove their veils to take mugshots. following an arrest.
“When they forced me to take off my hijab, I felt like I was being exposed. I’m not sure words can express how exposed and humiliated I felt.”Jamilla Clark said in a statement released by her lawyers, reporting that the police had threatened legal action if she refused to remove her hijab.
A collective action was then mounted, to defend in the name of the first amendment the people whose freedom of religious expression was infringed by the police: in total, more than 3,600 people, all faiths combined, were allegedly forced by the new police. Yorkist to remove a religious head covering between March 16, 2014 and August 23, 2021, the period covered by the lawsuit.
While New York City has accepted this Friday, April 5, 2024 to pay 17.5 million dollars (or 16.1 million euros) in compensation for the damage suffered, each person concerned will be eligible to obtain an amount ranging from 7,824 to 13,125 dollars, 4.4 million being dedicated to covering legal costs. That legal agreement must still be approved by District Judge Analisa Torres.
Religious freedom and dignity
“This is an important step for the privacy and religious rights of New Yorkers. The NYPD should never have stripped these believing New Yorkers of their head coverings and dignity. This was not just an attack on their rights, but on everything our city claims to believe in.”commented Albert Fox Cahn, one of the plaintiff’s lawyers, executive director of the Surveillance
Technology Oversight Project.
City legal department spokesman Nicholas Paolucci said “the agreement carefully balances the police institution’s respect for strongly held religious beliefs with the important need for law enforcement to take arrest photos”.
In 2020, the New York police accepted, in response to the ongoing legal action, to let arrested people wear religious head covering (hijab, yarmulke, turban, wig, etc.) when taking an identity photo, with a few exceptions, and on condition that their face is visible. The institution should now modify its internal directives, and train its agents in order to respect “privacy, rights and religious beliefs” people arrested.
2024-04-06 11:53:37
#York #City #pay #million #compensation #forcing #women #remove #hijabs
