The city has agreed to a $17.5 million payout to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by two hijab-wearing Muslim women who said the NYPD violated their civil rights by forcing them to remove their religious head coverings for mugshot photos.
The women — Jamila Clark, a resident of Cedar Grove, New Jersey, and Arwa Aziz, a Brooklyn resident — were arrested within eight months of each other in 2017 on charges that they violated orders of protection. Both women said they told police officers that they were bound by their religion to wear their hijabs at all times, but their pleas were refused.
Clark “sobbed in One Police Plaza with her hijab pushed down around her shoulders,” according to the complaint. “Like many Muslim women whose religious beliefs dictate that they wear a hijab, Ms. Clark felt exposed and violated without hers — as if she were naked in a public space,” the lawsuit alleged.
The settlement represented a “milestone win to protect New Yorkers’ privacy and First Amendment rights,” said the women’s attorney Albert Fox Cahn, who is also the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a civil rights organization. As a result of the lawsuit, the NYPD changed its policy in 2020 to allow people with head coverings to retain them for photographs.
Nick Paolucci, a spokesperson for the city’s Law Department, said in a statement that the settlement had “resulted in a positive reform for the NYPD.”
“The agreement carefully balances the department’s respect for firmly held religious beliefs with the important law enforcement need to take arrest photos,” he said. “This resolution was in the best interest of all parties.”
Attorneys for the plaintiffs estimated that as many as 3,600 people of different faiths would qualify for a share of the settlement, based on similar experiences with the police.
The complaint argued that other police departments had adjusted their policies to accommodate religious sensitivities, including those in Dearborn, Michigan; Long Beach, California; and Hennepin County, Minnesota, which includes Minneapolis.
“Hopefully this settlement will send a resonating incentive to police departments in New York and around the country to respect the religious obligations of all people,” said Afaf Nasher, executive director of the New York chapter of the nonprofit Council on American-Islamic Relations, in a statement. “We send our appreciation to the Muslim women who bravely persisted with this litigation, prompting policy change that benefit many with similar religious garb requirements.”
Andrew Wilson, an attorney who served as co-counsel for the lead plaintiffs, said the settlement would benefit people in New York who wear head coverings as part of their religious practice, including Sikhs and Jews.
Wilson added that the federal government allows people to wear head coverings for passport photos as long as a person’s face is fully visible, and that New York follows a similar practice for driver’s license pictures.
“The NYPD policy was out of step with both of those guidelines,” he said.
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