#NYC curfew during George Floyd protests was unconstitutional, class-action suit says

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A sign over the Brooklyn Queens Expressway in Brooklyn announces the end of the curfew.
Robert Mecea

New York City’s recent week-long curfew violated residents’ rights to go outside, a new lawsuit alleges.

The class-action suit claims the “extremely limited” acts of vandalism and looting in some city neighborhoods during protests around the police killing of George Floyd did not present “clear, imminent danger so substantial that it would outweigh the fundamental freedoms” that the curfew stripped away.

The controversial curfew ran from June 1 to June 7.

“There are very narrow circumstances during which you can relegate an entire city of millions of people to house arrest,” said lawyer Joshua Fitz, who represents the suits three named plaintiffs.

“And the imminency of the danger and the level of danger you would need to do that was not even remotely met by some isolated acts of vandalism and even looting.”

Fitz said the plaintiffs could be expanded to include any resident who was arrested or fined in violation of the order — or even all New Yorkers who were confined due to the curfew, which ran from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. on the first night and was bumped up to begin at 8 p.m. for the rest of the week.

The lawsuit hopes to provide financial relief to anyone impacted. It names both Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio as defendants.

At least hundreds of people were arrested for violating curfew as cops tried to quell the demonstrations against police brutality. Many more were summonsed, according to the suit.

But the lawsuit names three men who claim they were arrested for violating the curfew even though they weren’t in attendance at protests: Lamel Jeffery, Thaddeus Blake and Chayse Pena.

Blake was charging his phone in an outlet outside of his building in the Bronx after curfew on June 5 when police approached him and ordered him to go inside. When Blake told the officers he needed to first retrieve his phone, they “aggressively approached” and handcuffed him.

Fitch said the curfew played out in a discriminatory way against communities of color.

“I don’t know too many white people who were afraid to go outside after curfew, or arrested or given summonses the way the minority community was,” he added.

“We’ve all accepted that there’s a widespread, deadly pandemic. For the last three months city has never instituted a curfew to keep people safe, so the idea that a few instances of looting would make it justified is absurd,” he added.