New York City has agreed to pay $17.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by two women who said their rights were violated when they were forced to remove their hijabs before the police took their arrest photographs.
The financial settlement filed on Friday, which still requires approval by Judge Analisa Torres of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, is the latest development in the class-action lawsuit filed in 2018 by Jamilla Clark and Arwa Aziz, two Muslim women who said they felt shamed and exposed by the police officers’ actions.
“When they forced me to take off my hijab, I felt as if I were naked; I’m not sure if words can capture how exposed and violated I felt,” Ms.
Clark said in a statement. “I’m so proud today to have played a part in getting justice for thousands of New Yorkers.”
In response to the lawsuit, the Police Department in 2020 changed its policy to allow religious people to be photographed wearing head coverings, as long as the coverings were not obstructing their faces.
Ms. Clark, who was arrested on a violation of an order of protection in Manhattan in 2017, said she “wept and begged to put her hijab back on” while standing in Police Headquarters at One Police Plaza with the head scarf around her shoulders, according to the complaint.
Ms. Aziz, who was also arrested on a violation of an order of protection, said she had a similar experience eight months later when she was arrested in Brooklyn.
She sobbed as she “stood with her back to the wall, in full view of approximately one dozen male N.Y.P.D. officers and more than 30 male inmates,” the complaint said.
“Forcing someone to remove their religious clothing is like a strip search,” said Andrew F. Wilson, a lawyer with Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP, who is representing the women.
.Be the first to reply to this general discussion.
