The State of New York is to pay $17.500,000 to settle a class action case taken by two Muslim women who allege that police forced them and others to remove their head coverings and other religious garb during a process of taking time of arrest photos for a police database.
The case was filed in 2018 by Muslim American women Jamilla Clark and Arwa Aziz who say they felt ‘ashamed’ and ‘naked’ after NYPD police officers allegedly made them remove their hijabs in order to take mugshot photos of them.
The settlement, which has yet to be approved by U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, would see payments of between $7,000 to $13,000 paid out to the over 3,000 class action plaintiffs.
In a statement Clark, who had been arrested for violating a protection order, said, “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,”
Aziz, who was separately arrested for violating a protection order, said that she had shed tears and “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,” after being arrested in Brooklyn.
On the announcement of the settlement last Friday Clark said, “I’m so proud today to have played a part in getting justice for thousands of New Yorkers.”
In response to the lawsuit the NYPD updated its policy to allow arrestees to be photographed in their religious garb provided it does not obscure their faces.
It now instructs officers that if an uncovered photograph must be taken “the prisoner must be transported to the appropriate borough court section, where the photograph will be taken in a private area by a member of the service of the same gender.”
Partner at law firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP, Andrew F. Wilson said, “Forcing someone to remove their religious clothing is like a strip search.”
“This substantial settlement recognizes the profound harm to the dignity of those who wear religious head coverings that comes from forced removal,”
He continued, “Anyone who was subjected to this policy can now receive compensation for harm in the past. And the changes to the prior policy we have already obtained will protect New Yorkers in the future.”