Suit: NYC enforces unconstitutional law

New York -- Two New Yorkers who were recently arrested for violating an anti-loitering law declared unconstitutional 25 years ago have filed a false arrest suit.

The federal class-action suit accuses New York and its police department of continuing to arrest people under an anti-loitering law that was thrown out in 1983, the New York Daily News reported Wednesday.

The newspaper said the suit, if certified as class-action, will also cover others arrested under the law since it was abolished -- a number the Daily News found to be 2,513 people.

"This action seeks to end -- finally, for all time -- this pattern and practice of unconstitutional conduct by police officers in the NYPD," the suit says.

Paul Casale and Anthony Garcia were arrested in March 2007 while walking at the New York Port Authority. Their lawyers said they were strip-searched and arrested under the defunct law.

"They were walking when they were arrested, they were doing nothing wrong," lawyer Katie Rosenfeld said.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International.