NEW YORK – A coalition of Muslim groups can pursue a civil
rights lawsuit that accuses New York City police of conducting secret
surveillance of Muslims in New Jersey without suspicion of criminal activity, a
U.S. appeals court ruled on Tuesday.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia reversed a
lower court’s decision to throw out the case, finding the plaintiffs had legal
standing to assert claims that the counter-terrorism program violated their
rights.

“We have learned from experience that it is often where the
asserted interest appears most compelling that we must be most vigilant in
protecting constitutional rights,” Circuit Judge Thomas Ambro wrote for a
three-judge panel, invoking the U.S. internment of Japanese-Americans during
World War Two.

A spokesman for the city’s law department said the city was
reviewing the ruling, which did not resolve the merits of the case.

“At this stage, the issue is whether the NYPD in fact
surveiled individuals and businesses solely because they are Muslim, something
the NYPD has never condoned,” spokesman Nick Paolucci said.

The program became widely known after the Associated Press
reported that officers were infiltrating Muslim organizations throughout the
New York region in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade
Center.

Mayor Bill de Blasio ended the program in April 2014.

The plaintiffs in the case, including New Jersey imams, business
owners and students, sued in 2012, claiming the surveillance subjected them to
discrimination, threatened their careers and caused them to stop attending
religious services.

But U.S. District Judge William Martini in Newark, New Jersey,
dismissed the case in February 2014, ruling the city had persuasively argued
that the surveillance was an anti-terrorism, not an anti-Muslim, program.

“There is no Muslim exception to the Constitution,”
said Baher Azmy, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which
represents the plaintiffs along with Muslim Advocates.

The case is one of several lawsuits filed against New York over
the program.

The New York Civil Liberties Union brought a similar claim in
Brooklyn federal court in 2013. In addition, a group of civil rights lawyers
filed papers in Manhattan federal court, claiming the surveillance ran afoul of
a longstanding court order limiting how the police can monitor political
activity.

Both
of those disputes have been settled in principle, according to court filings.