Loading ...Court Rules That Muslims Can Sue the NYPD for Spying on Them
In a strongly worded opinion that invoked discrimination against Jews as well as the United States government’s internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, a federal court has cleared the way for Muslims to sue the New York Police Department for spying on Muslim students, businesses, and mosques.
The ruling, issued by the Third US Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia late on Tuesday, reversed a lower court’s decision to throw out the case. Back in 2014, New Jersey district judge Judge William Martini dismissed the suit, Hassan v. City of New York, which was brought by a coalition of Muslims who accused the NYPD of spying on them without cause.
The lower court’s controversial ruling found that the plaintiffs did not have legal standing to sue the NYPD, since the police claimed to be pursuing terrorists and did not explicitly single out people based on their religion. Martini also ruled that the plaintiffs could not show a causation between the NYPD’s conduct and their claims of discrimination.
The Third Circuit rejected that logic and gave the lower court a brief history lesson.
“Today it is acknowledged… that the FDR Administration and military authorities infringed the constitutional rights of Japanese-Americans during World War II by placing them under curfew and removing them from their West Coast homes and into internment camps,” Circuit Judge Thomas Ambro wrote in an opinion for a three-judge panel. “Yet when these citizens pleaded with the courts to uphold their constitutional rights, we passively accepted the Government’s representations.”
The latest ruling will now return the case to the lower court for review on the merits of the case itself.
Source: news.vice.com