A law expanding the rights of New Yorkers to sue for bias profiling by police, passed last year over Michael Bloomberg’s veto, will stand, Mayor de Blasio announced today. The new administration is abandoning the old one’s attempt to fight the law, which allows plaintiffs to sue the NYPD in state court for “injunctive relief,” i.e., changes to department policy, not money.
“There is absolutely no contradiction in protecting the public safety of New Yorkers and respecting their civil liberties. In fact, those two priorities must go hand-in-hand,” said de Blasio in a statement. “No New Yorker should ever face discrimination based on the color of his or her skin. We are going to be explicit in setting fair and effective standards that prevent bias in any form.” That, of course, includes stop-and-frisk, the subject of a separate Bloomberg suit dropped earlier this year by de Blasio.
