ACLU Sues TSA Official, JetBlue for Discriminating Against Passenger Wearing Arabic T-Shirt

[TransitJohn]

ACLU Sues TSA Official, JetBlue for Discriminating Against Passenger Wearing Arabic T-Shirt (8/9/2007)
U.S. Government Silences "We Will Not Be Silent" T-Shirt
NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union and New York Civil Liberties Union today filed a federal civil rights lawsuit charging that a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) official and JetBlue Airways illegally discriminated against an American resident based solely on the Arabic message on his t-shirt and his ethnicity.

JetBlue and the TSA official, identified as "Inspector Harris," would not let Raed Jarrar board his flight at John F. Kennedy Airport until he agreed to cover his t-shirt, which read "We Will Not Be Silent" in English and Arabic script. According to the complaint, Harris told Jarrar that it is impermissible to wear an Arabic shirt to an airport and equated it to a "person wearing a t-shirt at a bank stating, ‘I am a robber.'"

"It is a dangerous and slippery slope when we allow our government to take away a person's rights because of his speech or ethnic background," said Reginald Shuford, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Racial Justice Program. "Racial profiling is illegal and ineffective and has no place in a democratic society."

Jarrar, an architect and political analyst of Arabic descent, has lived in the United States since 2005 with his wife, who is an American citizen. On August 12, 2006, Jarrar attempted to fly on JetBlue from New York to Oakland, California, where he lived at the time. Although Jarrar successfully cleared two security checkpoints, he was approached by Inspector Harris while waiting at the boarding gate. Harris brought Jarrar to the JetBlue counter and told him that he would have to remove his shirt because other passengers were not comfortable with the Arabic script.

Rest at link:
http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/gen/31266prs20070809.html

[Roland99]

1. What a great country Bush and the neocons have turned America into, eh?

:(

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Were the other passengers all listeners of Rush?

Or fans of Coulter? Those two clowns have been telling their listeners that all Muslims are terrorists, so obviously anything in Arabic must be a terrorist message, and if on a tee shirt worn by a brown skinned man who is obviously an Arab--well don't you know that that is what them there terrorists are gonna do the next time they blow up a building? :sarcasm:

I have a tee shirt with words in Sanskrit, and another with words in Aramaic script. Wonder if those would "frighten" the passengers as well?

[Karenina]

3. prolly...

:eyes: