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Shaina Harris was cited after she went to a Burger King across the street around 11 p.m. last Sept. 22 to buy a milkshake, the ACLU said this afternoon.
Wanaque’s curfew prohibits any juvenile from being in a public location in the town from 10 p.m. to 5:30 a.m., unless they satisfy one of several exceptions.
Harris got her GED at age 16 and was already attending community college when the incident occurred, the ACLU said.
She’d returned from the fast food joint when a Wanaque officer stopped her near her the family mailbox and asked why she was outside without adult supervision, the ACLU said.
Harris called her stepfather, who came out as the officer gave her the ticket, which carries a $100 fine and the potential for 15 hours of community service.
“I was really surprised,” Harris said. “I had permission from my parents to go out and didn’t realize the police could write me up for something as harmless as walking across the street to Burger King.”
A Municipal Court judge postponed a hearing on the summons so that the ACLU-NJ lawsuit could be filed.
“I think parents are the ones who should determine and set curfews for their children, not the borough,” said Linda Richardson, a plaintiff in the case on behalf of her daughter. “My daughter already attends college; I trust her to walk across the street to Burger King.”
In 2004, the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court ruled that a West New York curfew was unconstitutional, citing a “strong constitutional presumption in favor of parental authority over government authority.”
“Criminalizing ordinary, harmless teenage behavior shifts valuable and limited police resources away from crime prevention,” said ACLU-NJ Executive Director Udi Ofer. “This juvenile curfew law does not protect communities, but, instead needlessly funnels young people into the criminal justice system.”
The lawsuit, Richardson v. Borough of Wanaque, was filed in Superior Court in Passaic County.
“Wanaque’s curfew is an assault on the basic constitutional rights of juveniles in the borough to come and go as they please with their parents’ consent,” said Edward Kiel, an attorney in the Hackensack law firm of Cole, Schotz, Meisel, Forman & Leonard, which is representing Harris. “These curfews wrongfully punish law-abiding people just trying to go about their daily lives freely, like our client.”
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