Discriminatory LGBTQ+ Arrests Suit Settled With Port Authority

NEW JERSEY - The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has settled a lawsuit with two men who claim that the Port Authority Police Department used unfair discriminatory tactics in charging perceived LGBTQ+ individuals with public lewdness in Port Authority men’s restrooms.

The settlement, filed Tuesday in New York Southern District court, bars the Port Authority police from using plainclothes officers to patrol lewdness or exposure in bathrooms, and requires that any future patrols in bathrooms have the highest-level senior sign off. The Port Authority Police Department will also be required to implement trainings regarding LGBTQ+ sensitivity and the new policy banning bias-based policing, as well as pay $40,000 in damages to the suit’s plaintiffs and designate single stalls at Port Authority bathrooms as gender neutral restrooms.

“This settlement represents an important victory for our clients, Cornell Holden and Miguel Mejia, who bravely fought to end the Port Authority Police Department’s discriminatory and, frankly, downright creepy practice of surveilling men the officers believed to be gay while using public urinals and falsely arresting them for public lewdness,” said Molly Griffard, Staff Attorney at The Legal Aid Society.

“This kind of blatant homophobia has no place in policing, and the reforms achieved in this lawsuit aim to safeguard against future abuses like the ones experienced and challenged by Mr. Holden and Mr. Mejia.”

The settlement stems from a 2017 federal lawsuit filed in New York against the Port Authority Police Department by plaintiffs Miguel Mejia and Cornell Holden, who alleged that police officers would unlawfully search, falsely arrest and charge men with public lewdness or exposure on the basis that they were perceived to be LGBTQ+.

Specifically, plainclothes officers would "pretend to use urinals" next to individuals in the men's restrooms, then step back from the urinal in to see behind the privacy wall. "At the sole and unfettered discretion of the P.A.P.D. officer, the target is then arrested by a team of P.A.P.D. officers when he exits the restroom," the initial complaint alleges.

According to the Legal Aid Society, which provided counsel to the plaintiffs, the increase in lewdness arrests in Port Authority bathrooms in the 2000s and 2010s was a coordinated effort by officers to boost their “quality of life” arrest statistics.

“Despite the media attention on this egregious practice … the PAPD continued to make such targeted arrests knowing or believing that most of the people arrested would ultimately plead guilty to lesser charges to avoid public embarrassment and humiliation, costly legal fees, and jail sentences, as well as suffer reputational and professional harm associated with the false charges,” the Legal Aid Society said in a statement. “Indeed, many of the people arrested for public lewdness in 2014 accepted plea deals for violation-level offenses, which are akin to a mere traffic ticket, in order to make their cases go away quickly.”

The settlement was prompted when Judge John G. Koeltl found last year that the plaintiffs presented enough evidence of Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment violations to go to trial.

“I’m proud of the difference we’ve made by standing up against the PAPD’s bias-based policing,” Mejia said in a statement. “As a commuter who passes through Port Authority facilities on a daily basis, I will feel safer knowing that the reforms we fought for have been put in place, making it so that people like me aren’t arrested just because of who we are or what we look like.”