New York City will pay $17.5 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought by two Muslim women.
Jamilla Clark and Arwa Aziz accused the city of violating their religious rights by requiring them to remove their hijabs during their mugshots during their 2017 arrests in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The two women were arrested for violating orders of protection – which they both have denounced. Their lawsuit was filed in 2018.
An estimated 3,600 people would be eligible for compensation under the new settlement agreement if they were required to remove head coverings between March 16, 2014 and Aug. 23, 2021. After the deduction of legal fees, $13.1 million will be available for payouts. Recipients will receive between $7,824 and $13,125, per Fox News.
The settlement still must be approved by U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Clark and Aziz’s lawyers compared requiring the women to remove their hijabs to 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,” said Andrew F. Wilson, a partner at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP which represented the plaintiffs. “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.”
"When they forced me to take off my hijab, I felt as if I were naked," Clark said in a statement published by the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project on April 5. "I'm not sure if words can capture how exposed and violated I felt."
"I’m so proud today to have played a part in getting justice for thousands of New Yorkers,” she said. “This settlement proves I was right all those years ago when I said it was wrong to remove my hijab for a mugshot.”
In 2020, New York agreed to let both men and women wear head coverings in their mugshots provided that their faces are visible. This included wigs, yarmulkes, and turbans. Nicholas Paolucci, a spokesman for the city's law department, said the new multimillion-dollar settlement “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,” said Paolucci, per Reuters.
