Judge Rules New York Surveillance Of Muslims Constitutional
U.S. District Judge William Martini, in a Newark, NJ court, says it’s legal for New York City to spy on mosques, Muslim Businesses and a Muslim student group.
U.S. District Judge William Martini in Newark, New Jersey, threw out a lawsuit brought by several New Jersey Muslims who claimed the New York Police Department illegally targeted them for undercover monitoring solely because of their religion…
In a 10-page ruling, Martini said the city had persuasively argued that its surveillance was intended as an anti-terrorism, not an anti-Muslim, measure.
“While this surveillance program may have had adverse effects upon the Muslim community after the Associated Press published its articles, the motive for the program was not solely to discriminate against Muslims, but rather to find Muslim terrorists hiding among ordinary, law-abiding Muslims,” Martini wrote.
Baher Azmy of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed the lawsuit along with a group called Muslim Advocates on behalf of several Muslim individuals and groups, compared Martini’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in 1944 that the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II was constitutional.
