In response to today’s hearing in Handschu v. Special Services Division, Muslim Advocates and the Center for Constitutional Rights provide the following joint statement:

Today the federal district court in Manhattan required the New York City Police Department to defend its Muslim spying program at a hearing lasting several hours. As an overwhelming amount of evidence and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting by the AP make clear, the program targets innocent American Muslims based on nothing more than their faith. Not only does the Department spy on thousands of innocent people and cause real harm in American Muslim communities, but it also acknowledges that the program has not produced a single lead to criminal activity.

Muslim Advocates and the Center for Constitutional Rights are counsel in Hassan v. City of New York, a constitutional challenge to the NYPD’s religious profiling program pending in the federal district court in New Jersey.