October, 13 2015, 11:30am EDT
NYPD Muslim Surveillance Case Reinstated
New Jersey Muslims Commend Ruling Affirming Their Constitutional Rights
WASHINGTON
Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued a comprehensive and stirring decision in the case Hassan v. City of New York, recognizing that New Jersey Muslims who have been subjected to the New York City Police Department's program of blanket, suspicionless surveillance stated a valid claim of discrimination on the basis of their religion. The decision reverses a district court ruling dismissing the case.
Muslim Advocates and the Center for Constitutional Rights challenged the spying program on behalf of a diverse group of plaintiffs from throughout the state - ranging from a decorated Iraq war veteran to the former principal of a grade-school for Muslim girls - who share one thing: their Muslim faith. The district court had dismissed the case on February 20, 2014, in a controversial 10-page summary ruling that has been compared to the discredited 1944 Supreme Court case upholding the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Without subjecting the City's program to the strict scrutiny required when governments engage in discriminatory practices, the district court simply accepted the City's claim that the discrimination was justified by its purported goal of protecting national security. The district court also found that any harm to the communities that have been spied on was not caused by the unlawful surveillance program itself, but by the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting by the Associated Press that exposed it.
"The court reaffirmed the elementary principle that law enforcement cannot spy on and harass individuals for no other reason than their religion and the equally important principle that courts cannot simply accept untested claims about national security to justify a gross stereotype about Muslims. There is no Muslim exception to the Constitution," said Center for Constitutional Rights Legal Director Baher Azmy. "This case of religious profiling is the other side of the stop-and-frisk coin, yet the de Blasio administration, which won the election on a platform of police reform, still defends this form of outright discrimination against Muslims."
"Today is a good day for the civil rights of all Americans," said Muslim Advocates Legal Director Glenn Katon. "The court agreed that American Muslims cannot be treated like second class citizens by police because of their faith. We look forward to continuing our case to ensure that no American should be spied on simply because of the way he or she prays."
The court today recognized the ugly parallels between the targeting of Muslims in the post-9/11 era and the targeting of the Japanese in WWII, as well as other dangerous historical parallels. Invoking Justice Robert Jackson's prescient dissenting opinion in the odious case upholding the internment of the Japanese, Korematsu v. United States, the court explained:
We believe that statement of Justice Jackson to be on the right side of history, and for a majority of us in quiet times it remains so . . . until the next time there is the fear of a few who cannot be sorted out easily from the many. Even when we narrow the many to a class or group, that narrowing--here to those affiliated with a major worldwide religion--is not near enough under our Constitution. "[T]o infer that examples of individual disloyalty prove group disloyalty and justify discriminatory action against the entire group is to deny that under our system of law individual guilt is the sole basis for deprivation of rights." Id. at 240 (Murphy, J., dissenting).
What occurs here in one guise is not new. We have been down similar roads before. Jewish-Americans during the Red Scare, African-Americans during the Civil Rights Movement, and Japanese-Americans during World War II are examples that readily spring to mind. We are left to wonder why we cannot see with foresight what we see so clearly with hindsight--that "[l]oyalty is a matter of the heart and mind[,] not race, creed, or color." Ex parte Mitsuye Endo, 323 U.S. 283, 302 (1944).
"This is a significant ruling for all Americans," said Farhaj Hassan, lead plaintiff of the lawsuit. "I am so pleased the court recognized our claim that the NYPD is violating our basic rights as Americans and were wrong to do so. No one should ever be spied on and treated like a suspect simply because of his or her faith, and today's ruling paves the path to holding the NYPD accountable for ripping up the Constitution. Enough is enough."
Under the NYPD's program, the AP reported, the NYPD spied on at least 20 mosques, 14 restaurants, 11 retail stores, two grade schools, and two Muslim Student Associations in New Jersey alone. The monitoring has included video surveillance of mosques, photographing license plates, community mapping, and infiltration by undercover officers and informants of places of worship, student associations, and businesses. Internal NYPD documents, including a list of 28 "ancestries of interest," reveal that the NYPD used racial and ethnic backgrounds as proxies to identify and target adherents to the Muslim faith. To date, by its own admission, the NYPD's surveillance of Muslims has not produced a single lead.
Though the NYPD recently disbanded one of the main units through which it conducted the surveillance, there is no evidence that it has abandoned the underlying unlawful targeting and profiling of Muslims.
For more information about the case, please visit www.muslimadvocates.org/endspying and https://www.ccrjustice.org/hassan.
Hassan was initially filed by Muslim Advocates; the Center for Constitutional Rights and Gibbons, P.C. joined as co-counsel several months later. It is the first case to challenge the NYPD's Muslim spying program.
The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. CCR is committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.
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Just 22 House Dems Oppose Bill That Bars UNRWA Funding While Giving Billions to Israel
"Our elected leaders are funding Palestinian death," said one advocacy group.
Mar 22, 2024
The House of Representatives on Friday approved a sprawling government spending package that prohibits U.S. funding for the United Nations' Palestinian refugee agency for at least a year and hands Israel billions of dollars in unconditional military assistance, even as the country massacres and starves Gaza civilians.
The 1,012-page legislation passed in a 286-134 vote, with 112 Republicans and just 22 Democrats opposing the bill. All but one of the bill's Democratic opponents are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC).
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the CPC, said in a statement after voting against the measure that she is "very concerned that this package continues funding for the Netanyahu government with no conditions, while at the same time prohibiting funding" for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)
"For decades, UNRWA has played a unique and integral role in supporting the welfare and survival of Palestinians in several countries," said Jayapal. "Humanitarian aid in the region is already severely restricted. Implementing a prohibition on UNRWA funding is irresponsible and unacceptable. As the largest contributor of funding to Israel, we should use our funding leverage to demand that humanitarian aid enter Gaza and that we have a lasting cease-fire and a return of all hostages."
In a
social media post ahead of Friday's vote, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) announced his intention to "vote no on this bill that bans aid to children in Gaza who are dying of hunger."
"Forget the politics and procedural jargon," Khanna wrote. "This is a test of first principles. The America I believe in must never be indifferent to the man-made starvation of children."
The legislation now heads to the Senate, which must pass the bill by Friday night to avert a partial government shutdown.
"Instead of banning funding for UNRWA, the U.S. should restore its aid to Gaza and halt weapons transfers to the Israeli military. No more money for massacre."
If passed and signed into law by President Joe Biden, the measure would bar the U.S. from resuming funding for UNRWA until at least March 25, 2025. The Biden administration and other Western governments suspended donations to UNRWA in January after Israel accused a dozen of the agency's 13,000 Gaza employees of taking part in the October 7 Hamas-led attack—allegations it has not substantiated.
While Canada, Finland, and other countries have since resumed funding for UNRWA, the U.S. has kept its contributions frozen as famine spreads rapidly in Gaza. The territory's entire population is facing "high levels of acute food insecurity," according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification.
By including such a provision in must-pass government funding legislation, Congress is "further deepening U.S. complicity in Israel's starvation of Palestinian children," said Josh Ruebner, an adjunct lecturer at Georgetown University and the former policy director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights.
While barring U.S. funding for the primary humanitarian relief agency in Gaza, the measure includes $3.8 billion in military support for Israel, whose forces have used
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As Security Policy Reform Institute co-founder Stephen Semler pointed out, the bill also prohibits U.S. funding for the United Nations commission that is investigating potential war crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel.
The House just passed a bill that cements genocide as official US policy. The legislation gives Israel $3.8 billion in weapons, sanctions UNRWA as Palestinians starve, and defunds a UN investigation into Israel's violations of international law.
All but 22 Democrats voted for it pic.twitter.com/8q9xaMVeJI
— Stephen Semler (@stephensemler) March 22, 2024
IfNotNow, an American Jewish group that campaigns for Palestinian rights, said in response to Friday's vote that "our elected leaders are funding Palestinian death."
"It's unsurprising that the GOP is working to ban funding for UNRWA while the Israeli military massacres and starves Palestinians in Gaza with U.S. financial and diplomatic backing," the group said. "It's unconscionable that so many Democrats are joining them."
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As the United States doubled down on banning funds for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, Finland said Friday that it would resume contributions to the lifesaving organization in an implicit rebuke of unsubstantiated Israeli claims—reportedly extracted via torture—that staff members were involved in the October 7 attacks.
Finnish Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Ville Tavio announced during a press conference that the country's €5 million ($5.4 million) annual contribution to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) would be reinstated, with 10% of the funding reserved for "risk management."
"Improving UNRWA's risk management, i.e. starting to prevent abuses and close supervision, gives us sufficient guarantees at this stage from the perspective of risk management that support can continue," said Tavio. "As a result, UNRWA's support for this year will proceed."
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Led by the United States, more than a dozen nations including Finland suspended UNRWA funding after Israeli officials accused 12 of the agency's 13,000 employees in Gaza of participating in the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini terminated nine of the 12 employees accused by Israel. However, Lazzarini later admitted to having no evidence to support their firing, calling the terminations an act of "reverse due process." An Israeli dossier cited by countries suspending UNRWA funding also contained no concrete evidence of staff involvement in the October 7 attacks.
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) earlier this week called Israeli claims that UNRWA is a Hamas proxy "flat-out lies."
UNRWA employees say they were tortured into making false confessions about involvement in Hamas and October 7. The staffers accuse Israeli interrogators of severely beating and waterboarding them, as well as threatening to harm their relatives.
The European Union and nations including Canada, Sweden, Denmark, and Australia subsequently resumed funding for UNRWA, while other contributors including Saudi Arabia increased their donations.
"For the time being there is no alternative to UNRWA," Danish Minister for Development Cooperation Dan Jørgensen said earlier this week.
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UNRWA supports Palestinian refugees not only in Gaza and the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, but also in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. In Gaza, agency staff provide shelter, food, water, clothing, blankets, and other essential humanitarian assistance amid Israel's genocidal war and siege, which have killed and maimed more than 113,000 Palestinians while displacing around 90% of the embattled strip's 2.3 million people. With deadly starvation spreading rapidly in Gaza, the agency's work is more needed than ever.
It's perilous work. According to figures from the Aid Worker Security Database, at least 196 humanitarian workers—most of them UNRWA staffers in Gaza—have been killed in Palestine since last October. One in every 100 UNRWA workers in Gaza has been killed by Israeli bombs and bullets, the highest toll in United Nations history.
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Trump's deal with the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) was announced back in 2021 and finally got approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission last month. Thanks to the merger, Trump Media & Technology Group—whose primary product is Truth Social—could be trading on the stock market under the ticker symbol DJT next week.
Digital World had a $42.81 closing stock price on Thursday and Trump is set to own nearly 79 million shares, which works out to over $3 billion. However, a Wall Street provision known as a "lock-up" agreement will block Trump—the presumptive Republican presidential candidate for the November election—from swiftly ditching that stock to cover his mounting legal costs.
As The Associated Pressdetailed before the merger vote:
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There are a few exceptions, such as by transferring stock to immediate family members. But in such cases, the recipients would also have to agree to abide by the lock-up agreement.
Experts warn that Trump selling a bunch of his Truth Social shares after the six-month mark could prove problematic.
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As a result of the civil fraud case launched by Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James, Trump and his real estate company were hit with $355 million in fines last month. His adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, owe $4 million each, and longtime executive Allen Weisselberg was fined $1 million.
With interest, the former president owes $454 million and his sons owe $10 million. James gave Trump until March 25 to pay up. Attorneys for Trump, who is appealing, said in a Monday filing that it has been a "practical impossibility" for him to secure a bond. The attorney general is preparing to seize Trump's assets.
Trump's proceeds from the Truth Social merger could be "a ripe target for James to go after," MarketWatchnoted Thursday. Financial attorney Mark Zauderer told the outlet that "bank accounts and debts owed, [including] the proceeds of a company sale, are far more simple to freeze than, say, Trump's stake in an LLC that owns a building."
As of Friday, Forbesestimated Trump's net worth at $2.6 billion, much of which is tied up in real estate. Earlier this month, a New York Times analysis found that he has about $350 million in cash. Trump claimed on Truth Social early Friday that he has "almost" $500 million in cash.
On top of the fraud fine, a New York City jury in January awarded E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in a judgment against Trump for defaming the journalist after she accused him of raping her at a department store in the 1990s. Trump, who is also appealing this decision, posted a $91.6 million bond provided by an insurance company in early March.
Trump faces a pair of federal criminal cases—one for his handling of classified documents and another related to his attempt to overturn his 2020 loss to Democratic President Joe Biden, who is seeking reelection. He has also been indicted in a criminal election interference case in Georgia and a hush money case in New York.
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