A settlement in our challenge to  NYPD surveillance of New York Muslims was announced today, heralding new safeguards to protect against bias-based and unjustified investigations of Muslim and other minority communities.

The settlement was announced in Raza v. City of New York, a lawsuit on behalf of three New York Muslims, two mosques, and a Muslim non-profit organization, who alleged they were swept up in the NYPD’s dragnet surveillance of Muslims. The ACLU, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and the CLEAR project at CUNY School of Law filed the suit in 2013. The law firm of Morrison & Foerster LLP joined the litigation team soon after. The lawsuit charged that the NYPD mapped Muslim communities and their institutions, sent officers and informants into mosques to monitor innocent religious leaders and congregants, and used other invasive means to spy on Muslims.

The settlement, which is subject to court approval, imposes a number of important safeguards to ensure the NYPD’s investigative practices are in line with the protections of the Constitution. These include a robust anti-religious-discrimination policy, safeguards to constrain intrusive investigatory practices, a limitation on the use of undercover officers and informants, and — critically — the appointment of an outside civilian  aclu SOURCE