Federal Lawsuit Against Town of Cicero To Proceed As Class-Action
Women arrested by Cicero Police are suing the Town for privacy violations regarding bathroom configuration in lock-up facilities
By Irene Romulo, April Alonso, Ankur Singh
The Dirksen federal building (Ken Lund via Flickr)
At a status hearing on July 22, 2019, a federal lawsuit brought forth by five women who were arrested and detained by Cicero Police was approved as a class action by U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly of the Northern District of Illinois.
In the lawsuit, filed last year in May, the women allege that the way the lock-up facility is configured inside the police station forced them to “expose their genitals to male Town of Cicero lock-up employees and/or male detainees each and every time they use the bathroom,” according to court documents.
The women say they experienced “stress, humiliation and other emotional damages from the exposure and/or potential exposure of their genitals,” reports the lawsuit. “As well as the emotional and physical pain and discomfort they experienced from attempting to not use the bathroom facilities for as long as they could, due to their desire not to have to expose their genitals in the process.”
Court documents further state that, “there is no penological or other legal justification for the above practice.”
This, they argue, is a violation of their fourth amendment right which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures, and includes a right to privacy.
Attorneys for the Town of Cicero deny their claims.
The class-action status allows the women’s attorneys--Adele D. Nicholas, Mark G. Weinberg, and Richard Dvorak-- to contact “all female detainees who were or will be in the future detained at the Town of Cicero Police Department lock-up facility for eight hours or more during the time period of May 18, 2016 to the present.”
The plaintiff’s attorneys were unavailable for comment.
An initial random analysis of six months of detention records from the Town showed that there were between 500-600 women who were arrested and could potentially join the lawsuit. Thus fulfilling the requirement that the number of people affected be “sufficiently numerous.”
The Town of Cicero declined to comment on the case.
An initial walk through of the lock-up facilities by the women’s attorneys was scheduled for July 11th but had to be rescheduled due to a last-minute emergency. The new tentative date is August 13th.
The next hearing date for the lawsuit is scheduled for September 24, 2019. Attorneys for the women will now have to send first round notices to all the women who may have been affected.
