Eight New Jersey Muslims are suing the New York Police Department in federal court over the agency’s surveillance and intelligence-gathering practices targeting Muslims. The suit seeks to end the program.
“The NYPD program is founded upon a false and constitutionally impermissible premise: that Muslim religious identity is a legitimate criterion for selection of law-enforcement surveillance targets,” the lawsuit said, according to the Associated Press.
One of the plaintiffs, Syed Farhaj Hassan, is an Army reservist who served in Iraq in 2003.
“Guilt by association was forced on me,” Hassan told the AP.
