Apparently the Supreme Court's decision is not good enough to the NY State Legislature when it comes to allowing religious groups to worship in city schools. Last June, the U.S. Second Circuit of Appeals ruled that NYC public schools can prohibit religious services, and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, letting the Second Circuit's decision stand. But, still, the State Senate will consider a bill to allow religious services in schools. And the NYCLU wants to remind lawmakers why it's a terrible idea. more ›

The NYCLU has filed a lawsuit with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of a group of NYPD detectives who say the department's elite Intelligence Division is racist. The lawsuit alleges that the NYPD "has chosen to cloak promotions in secrecy and give the all-white high level supervisors who run the Intelligence Division unfettered discretion to handpick white detectives for promotions over more qualified African American detectives." Black detectives also claim there is a so-called "secret list" from which white officers are promoted within the division. more ›

Less than two days after the NYCLU demanded that Brookfield Properties remove the barricades preventing the public from easily accessing Zuccotti Park, the property management company has done just that. Earlier this evening, the barricades were removed and stacked off to the sides, permitting visitors to enter the park wherever their heart's desire, instead of the narrow security checkpoints. FREEDOM! But with freedom comes responsibility; according to one occupier, "Brookfield Security said unless we do something stupid the park will remain open!" more ›

14 Muslim leaders have fired off a sternly-worded letter to Mayor Bloomberg announcing their intention to boycott his annual interfaith breakfast on Friday, which brings together religious and political leaders from all over the spectrum for a friendly coffee klatsch. At issue is a damning series of articles in the Associated Press detailing the NYPD's targeting of Muslim communities for surveillance. Commissioner Ray Kelly has firmly denied this, telling the City Council, "We don't do it ethnically, we do it geographically. We don't racially profile, we follow leads wherever those leads take us." The NYCLU, however, calls it a "rogue domestic surveillance operation," and in November hundreds of Muslims demonstrated outside police headquarters. more ›

According to new data released by the NYPD [pdf], an average of one student is arrested every day in the city's school system, and three others are issued summonses. During summer school from July through September, four students each day are arrested, and 94% of those arrested are black or Latino, and 83% are male. "The data raise concerns about black students being disproportionately arrested in the city's schools," Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the NYCLU says in a release. "If the Bloomberg administration is truly serious about closing the achievement gap, then they must address this disparity and focus more attention on educating children—not arresting them.” more ›

As if the NYPD's habit of stopping and frisking anyone and everyone officers find suspicious weren't controversial already, new police data makes it look like the police department is on track to break last year's record-breaking stop and frisk stats. In 2010, the NYPD made 601,055 street stops (up 4.3 percent from 2009) and in the first six months of this year alone the police used the tactic 362,150 times. Sadder, in the Bronx, at least, 91 percent of those stopped and frisked between April and June were male and 92 percent were black or Hispanic. Profiling much? more ›

Tasers, or "Conducted Energy Devices," are an increasingly popular method of "non-lethal" force in police departments across New York State, as well as being trusted companions at the ballgame. However, according to a new report [pdf] from the NYCLU, "police officers are using Tasers in inappropriate, irresponsible and downright deadly manner." As the saying goes: shoot 50,000 volts of electricity into somebody's chest first, ask questions later. more ›

In late August, the Associated Press published an exposé about the NYPD's partnership with the Central Intelligence Agency to spy on Muslims in NYC. Unsurprisingly, the NYCLU is challenging the partnership in court, and yesterday filed a motion to determine whether the spying operation violates an existing court order—the Handschu Guidelines, which are named after a 1971 plaintiff in a lawsuit against the NYPD accusing them of violating the constitution while investigating political groups. more ›

Yesterday, Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy asked for a preliminary injunction to bar 37 gang members from a two-mile square "safety zone" in Wyandanch. Levy said, "Gangs ... have a propensity to take over school yards and street corners. They do not own those streets, the people of the community own those streets," and the injunction would prohibit gang members from wearing "gang colors, making gang signs or even gathering on corners or in parks," Newsday reports. more ›

If you're one of the NYPD's lucky stop-and-frisk customers this year (183,326 and counting!) the police is giving you a slightly less opaque reason as to why they roughed you up. New forms that officers fill out following a stop include a "Reason for Force Used" field that gives officers the choice of checking a box that describes the situation leading up to the rough stop. The choices are: "suspect reaching for suspected weapon" (like this innocent teenager), "suspect flight," "defense of self," "defense of other," and "overcome resistance." If those don't quite paint a nuanced picture of what happened, there's always the classic "other" box that allows the officer to jot down why you were worth their time. Presumably this is to save room on the form so they don't have to print both "brown" and "black." more ›

Last year, when the NYPD broke its previous all-time-high record for stop-and-frisks with a sensational 601,055 street stops, many fans thought there was no way they could top one in 2011! But Coach Ray Kelly's NYPD dream team is on track for yet another champion stop-and-frisk season this year! Police have stopped and interrogated over 161,000 innocent New Yorkers in the first quarter of 2011, and at this rate they'll easily crush last year's record with over 700,000 stops. But will the NYPD's bitter rivals—the wild card underdog New York Civil Liberties Union [NYCLU]—steal their thunder in the playoffs? more ›

Remember those nifty electronic fingerprinting machines that the NYPD debuted in September to fingerprint people on the scene of a crime? Probably not, because the cops usually flash that Men In Black thingy in your face afterwards. But the concern at the time was: what happens to the fingerprints after they're gathered if you're not charged with a crime? more ›

As we've frequently noted, teenagers, as a whole, comprise an unruly, dangerous mob that continues to threaten the every fabric of our society. We ban them from public spaces, we install sonic devices that drive them away with frequencies only their ears can hear, and we crack down on them for peddling candy on mass transit. But let's face it: teenagers are a symptom, not a cause. To nip this menace in the bud, schools have been suspending elementary students in record numbers, according to a new NYCLU analysis. more ›

Break out the bubbly, precinct captains; the NYPD has broken its previous record for the number of stop and frisks in a single year! NYPD officers made 601,055 street stops in 2010, the first time that number has topped the 600K mark, according to public records obtained by the AP. It's an increase of 4.3% from the previous record of 575,304, set in 2009—a year that saw an uptick of 8% from the short-lived 2008 record of 531,159. Our back of the envelope calculations suggest that by now the NYPD has probably done at least one stop and frisk for every NYC resident. Of course, some are frisked more than others! more ›

Does your job have the right to track your whereabouts with GPS without your knowledge? Even if they're tracking you to try and prove that you are lying to them? That's the question at the core of a new lawsuit brought forth by the NYCLU on behalf of former Department of Labor employee Michael Cunningham who was fired from his $115,000 per year job as director of the staff and organization development based on information gained from a GPS tracker that had been placed on his family BMW. more ›

On the eve of the ninth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, over 2,000 New Yorkers gathered downtown to show their support for the controversial Park 51 community center and mosque. Organized by the NYCLU and the New York Neighbors for American Values coalition, gatherers were encouraged to wear white and carry American flags, but no signs of protest. Instead, gatherers listened to music and thoughts from faith leaders and city officials. Vigil organizer Peter Hogness told NY1, "To me this says I love New York because it is diverse, because we have the whole world in New York and we treat everybody equally." more ›

Last month a right-wing group threatened the MTA with a lawsuit in order to get their ad against the "Ground Zero" mosque onto city buses. Now the ACLU and NYCLU have chimed in with their own ad, seen here, supporting the Islamic community center proposed for Park Place. The ad will start appearing on buses on September 20th. Last month, the ACLU and NYCLU joined more than 100 groups in forming New York Neighbors for American Values, a coalition "devoted to the core American values of religious freedom, diversity, and equality that has supported the right of the community center to be built in its proposed location." The group will be holding a vigil tonight near Park51, on the eve of the planned 9/11 protest outside the site of the proposed mosque. more ›

At a rally at City Hall yesterday, the NYCLU joined Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries and state Senator Eric Adams to announce new bills that would ban the NYPD's practice of saving personal data of than 100,000 people who are stopped, questioned, frisked, and then released each year. The legislation comes on the heels of an NYCLU class action lawsuit against the city, which would force the NYPD to seal all personal records of people who were stopped and frisked but whose cases "ended either in dismissal or only the payment of a fine for a noncriminal violation." Yesterday Adams (he of the Stop the Sag crusade) compared the NYPD's stop and frisk fever to Arizona's illegal immigration law: more ›

More than 85% of people stopped and frisked by the NYPD are released without an arrest or summons. But regardless of innocence, the NYPD has been keeping a database of personal information on more than 100,000 people who are stopped, questioned, frisked, and released each year. Today the NYCLU has filed a class action lawsuit [pdf] to get the NYPD to seal all personal records of people who were stopped and frisked, were arrested or issued a summons, and whose cases "ended either in dismissal or only the payment of a fine for a noncriminal violation." The lead plaintiffs are two NYC residents who were stopped and frisked by police officers but subsequently cleared of any wrongdoing. In this video, they explain what happened: more ›

Yesterday we reported that the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of Yadiris Rivera, who was fired from her job for wanting to pump breast milk during the work day. The Daily News is reporting that her employer, Medical Imaging of Manhattan (an Upper East Side mammography center), is denying the charge. Colleen O'Brien, who is named in the complaint, told the paper the company is "offended by these false allegations." more ›

Today the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of Yadiris Rivera, who was fired from her job for wanting to pump breast milk during the work day. Rivera, a Newark resident, had been working (for six years) at a mammography center in Manhattan and received positive reviews and performance-based raises during her entire time there. more ›

29-year-old Antonio Musumeci isn't the only one who's been hassled by The Man for photographing near a federal building in New York, but he is behind the latest lawsuit being filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union. The organization says citizens should not be prohibited to photograph while standing in public spaces near such buildings. The Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Protective Service, an unnamed federal officer, and Inspector Clifford Barnes of the Federal Protective Service are all named in the suit, which was filed in Manhattan yesterday. more ›

The push to shut down a little-known immigrant jail in the West Village has been complicated due to the poor health of detainees—some of whom allege their medical problems have been overlooked by jail officials. Though Friday marks "the official end of detention operations" at the Varick Federal Detention Facility with the scheduled transfer of the remaining 300 detainees to New Jersey, authorities have struggled to find new places to hold non-citizens with illnesses and mental problems, the Times reports. And more detainees are arriving every day. more ›

A 2004 lawsuit that claimed Salvation Army tried to spread its Evangelical message through government-funded socials services came to a settlement today. From now on NY City agencies will monitor the organization to make sure it's maintaining proper church-state separation. “This agreement protects the religious freedom of all New Yorkers who rely on faith-based organizations for crucial government-funded social services,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NY Civil Liberties Union, the group that brought the suit. “No one should be subject to proselytizing because they need foster care, adoption, child care or H.I.V. services.” more ›

If you've ever tried to fight a ticket handed to you by a cop in the subway system, you'll be familiar with the "hearings" held by the NYC Transit Adjudication Bureau (TAB), during which you waste half your day in Brooklyn waiting to plead your case before a bored bureaucrat in a small room with a tape recorder. These typically anticlimactic hearings are closed to the public, unless the accused consents to an observer’s presence. Naturally, the NYCLU opposes these closed doors, because they "deprive the public of information about the fairness of the hearing process and accused transit riders of an understanding of the adjudication process." more ›

Following the NYPD shooting of Sean Bell in November 2006, the NYCLU filed a Freedom of Information request with the NYPD, asking for the NYPD’s annual statistical reports on police shootings from 1996 through 2006, as well as data about the race of civilians shot at by police. In response, the NYPD released some annual statistical reports, but it denied the NYCLU’s request for full racial data. A lawsuit ensued, and now a judge has ruled that the NYPD can't withhold the data, which will show the racial breakdown of people shot at but not struck by cops. more ›

One day in September 2008, Queens High School student Stephen Cruz suffered a lacerated forehead when school safety agent Daniel O’Connell, without provocation, allegedly kicked open a restroom stall that Stephen was using. Cruz claims that after he tumbled to the floor bleeding from his head, O'Connell (whom the students called RoboCop) walked away saying, "That's life; it will stop bleeding." Typical robot. more ›

Days after the NYPD announced plans to expand their anti-terror surveillance network to a huge swath of midtown, it's been revealed that the department is also quickly amassing a vast database of cell phone users. Officers have been instructed to remove suspects' cell phone batteries when making an arrest, for the twofold purpose of "avoiding leakage" and also documenting the phone's International Mobile Equipment Identity number [IMEI]. The IMEI number is registered with the service provider whenever a call is made, and can be used to connect the dots between suspects. Naturally, the NYCLU is pissed. more ›