Court reinstates lawsuit over NYPD surveillance of Muslims

Claims that accuse New York City police of profiling Muslims for surveillance are “valid”, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit announced Tuesday, acknowledging that complaints by New Jersey Muslims have legitimacy in the court of law.

What occurs here in one guise is not new.

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals said the NYPD could not target a group exclusively on the basis of their religion or ethnic background. “Jewish-Americans during the Red Scare, African-Americans during the Civil Rights Movement, and Japanese-Americans during World War II”.

Despite failing to make any meaningful contribution to the fight against terrorism, the NYPD program, which was officially disbanded in 2014, did manage to fuel widespread paranoia among Muslim-Americans, while also triggering a number of lawsuits seeking to halt what was perceived to be a blatantly discriminatory program.

The judge said the more likely explanation for the surveillance “was to locate budding terrorist conspiracies”, adding that the police “could not have monitored New Jersey for Muslim terrorist activities without monitoring the Muslim community itself”.

The program became widely known after a series of articles by the Associated Press, which reported that police officers were infiltrating Muslim organizations throughout the greater New York region in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center.

The NYPD has insisted that its program, which was shut down previous year, was merely meant to stay on guard for possible terror threats.

Caption: People walk past immigrant Arab businesses on Steinway Street in the Astoria neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York, September 2, 2011. The ruling stated the program was not instituted to discriminate against Muslims, but to identify terrorists hiding among law-abiding Muslims.

The appellate panel-Judge Thomas Ambro, Julio Fuentes and Jane Roth disagreed.

At the time, New York Mayor Bill De Blasio said New York would have “a police force that keeps our city safe, but that is also respectful and fair”. “Our only comment right now is that we are reviewing the decision”, said Nicholas Paolucci.

“I am so pleased the court recognized our claim that the NYPD is violating our basic rights as Americans and were wrong to do so”, lead plaintiff of the lawsuit Farhaj Hassan said in a statement.

Hassan was initially filed by Muslim Advocates; the Center for Constitutional Rights and Gibbons, P.C. joined as co-counsel several months later.

Muslim Advocates Legal Director Glenn Katon said the court agreed “American Muslims can not be treated like second class citizens by police due to their faith”.

The New Jersey Muslims “have plausibly alleged that the City engaged in intentional discrimination”, Ambro wrote in overturning the ruling, creating “a presumption of unconstitutionality that remains the City’s obligation to rebut…”