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Two Muslim women say the NYPD is violating arrestees’ civil rights by requiring them to remove religious head coverings while taking their booking photograph.
Plaintiffs Jamilla Clark and Arwa Aziz are challenging a New York Police Department policy that requires women arrestees to remove any religious head coverings while their booking photograph is being taken.
The two women claim this policy violates their constitutional right to free exercise of religion, as well as state and federal statutes.
Clark was arrested in January 2017 for violating a protective order filed by her ex-husband, a protective order she says was bogus. She claims NYPD officers forced her to be photographed with her head covering pushed down to her shoulders.
Officers threatened to prosecute her if she did not remove the hijab, she says. Clark wept and begged to put the hijab back on, but she says the officer taking the photograph ignored her while another officer openly mocked her Muslim faith.
Aziz says she received similar treatment eight months later, forced to remove her hijab while being photographed in front of about a dozen male NYPD officers and over 30 male inmates. She says officers spent almost five minutes taking multiple photographs of her uncovered head from different angles.
Both women were told – falsely, according to the class action lawsuit – that they were legally required to remove their head coverings while being photographed. Actual NYPD policy allows arrestees to be photographed bareheaded in private by a photographer of their same sex, the plaintiffs say, though they may have to be transported to a separate photographing facility.
Notwithstanding the procedures used to take the photographs, the plaintiffs note that the resulting photographs become part of a permanent print and electronic record, allowing any number of persons unknown to the arrestees to see images of them with their heads uncovered.
The plaintiffs note the NYPD policy is inconsistent with those of the U.S. State Department and Citizenship and Immigration Services, both of which allow religious head coverings to be worn in photographs as long as they do not obscure the photographed person’s face. The New York State Department of Motor Vehicles Regulations also allows religious head coverings in driver’s license photos, plaintiffs say.
The head covering, or hijab, is a requirement of Clark and Aziz’s Muslim faith, according to the NYPD class action lawsuit. Women are required to keep their heads covered while they are in the presence of men who are not members of their immediate family, or mahram. The plaintiffs say the hijab covers their hair, neck, and sometimes part of the chest, but it leaves the entire face visible.
“Being forced to remove one’s hijab in public, particularly in the presence of men who do not belong to the wearer’s mahram, is a profound defilement of the wearer’s sincerely-held religious beliefs and a violation of her religious practice,” the NYPD class action reads. “Requiring a Muslim woman to remove her hijab in public is akin to demanding that a secular person strip naked in front of strangers.”
Clark and Aziz are joined in this civil rights class action lawsuit by plaintiff Turning Point, a Queens County-based nonprofit that supports Muslim women and girls affected by domestic violence.
The plaintiffs seek to represent a Class including all persons arrested by the NYPD, required to take a post-arrest booking photograph while in any NYPD facility, and were forced to remove any religious head covering for that booking photograph.
They seek a court injunction barring the NYPD from forcing the removal of religious head coverings for post-arrest photographs, and requiring the department to institute a new, non-discriminatory policy. They are asking the court to award punitive damages, court costs and attorney’s fees.
The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys O. Andrew F. Wilson and Emma L. Freeman of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP and by Albert F. Cahn of Council on American-Islamic Relations New York.
The NYPD Religious Head Covering Removal Class Action Lawsuit is Clark, et al. v. City of New York, Case No. 1:18-cv-02334, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
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17 thoughts onNYPD Photo Policy Violates Religious Rights, Class Action Says
Add me, I am a furry.
If you want to wear a head covering, go back to where you lived previously.
Enough with the murderous religion of peace. It is bad enough that they do not want to assimilate but keeping such bogus religious requirements in the USA should not be allowed. Maybe then they will stay in their third world countries. We are being invaded. Stop it now!
Time to get rid of all organized fantasyland religion. Long past due. Religions are nothing more than member clubs each with their own set of rules and regulations. Basically they are non-profit (meaning WE pay the taxes for every $ in tax they can weasel out of) real estate operations.
Historically, with a few rare exceptions, no other single entity/organization has caused more pain, suffering and even death to so many people….people who didn’t belong to their “club”. Lastly, it should be against the law to subject any person, including children under the age of 18, to any religious propaganda or brainwashing. This is where little minds get the idea that they can “kill or torture the infidels”, bar from heaven (christian excommunication) etc. All pure nonsense.
Jeff, “entities” do not cause pain, suffering and death. To say they do is to say guns cause pain, suffering and death. PEOPLE cause this. They use the gun, or the entity, but the people are the source. In that same light, cars don’t kill either…the drivers behind the wheels do. So when we propose to ban religion or call it child abuse, we can’t be too careful. We then need to ban guns and arrest anyone caught transporting children in vehicles.
Religion covers a broad range. Rather than excommunicating, killing or torturing, my church helps to provide local children with warm coats and school backpacks and supplies, provide food and help people in the community. I don’t know what kind of “religion” you’ve been subjected to, but Christianity in particular, is about Christ. PEOPLE have used it to make a profit, bomb clinics, etc. That doesn’t mean that was Christ’s message. My church welcomes anyone, regardless of race or bank status. They only ask that you seek Jesus and to live as He taught…the greatest commandment to love God and the second to love your neighbor. If PEOPLE did just that, there wouldn’t be any killing, pain or suffering.
Tell that to the atheist Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao.
This lawsuit should be dimissed, immediately. This is total bs.
Add me to
Should be corrected to Margaret-Joan Conrad
How could a law enforcement officer identify her as a legal driver? Drivers licenses shouldn’t be issued to illegals or people who are unrecognizable. Neither passports, birth certificates voting registration or SSI cards etc.
We are Americans and our laws must be upheld. Please don’t support this kind of vigilantism.
In the Middle East and Africa, being the dustiest part of the world, men and women are forced to cover their hair to protect it from the brutal dust storms. Eventually, this became a tradition were it became expected from women to abide by. It has nothing to do with religion. The word hair never appear neither in the Qur’an nor in the narrated teachings of the Prophet of Islam. There are now a days well couched and well rehersed agent-provacatours canvassing the streets of America to entrap naive and gullible Americans for juicy lawsuits.
Thank you Raid for the insight. I don’t think a 3 second photo would hurt any religion.
The Amish of Pennsylvania have to have their photo’s taken and their belief is that the photo steals their very soul.
I think one person wanted to have the whole face covered for a drivers license photo! Ridiculous.