New York City has agreed to pay $28 million to settle a class action lawsuit accusing the Department of Correction of forcing detainees through a second, unnecessary strip search after they arrived at Manhattan Criminal Court — even though they had already been strip-searched before leaving Rikers Island. The class period covers October 1, 2022, through February 29, 2024, according to the settlement, with a separate enhanced-security class period stretching back to March 28, 2020. Anyone who was held in DOC custody and subjected to that redundant search at the Manhattan Court Division could be eligible for a pro rata payment from the fund.
The case, formally titled Lewis, et al. v. City of New York, et al., carries case number 23 Civ 2600 (CM) and is before U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. According to reporting from Claim Depot, the lawsuit alleged that the city and its Department of Correction violated detainees' federal and state constitutional rights by requiring individuals in custody to undergo the extra search once they reached the Manhattan Court Division. The city has agreed to settle, per Claim Depot, in order to avoid the risks and costs of continued litigation, and has not admitted wrongdoing.
How Eligibility Is Determined
Presumptive class members don't need to dig up their own paperwork to prove they qualify. Eligibility is instead determined by an official Class List spreadsheet compiled directly from Department of Correction transport records that track every inmate transfer from Rikers Island to Manhattan Criminal Court, per the court record filed in the Southern District of New York. Claim Depot's reporting adds that eligible class members must appear on that list, and that qualifying individuals are those who received a strip search at the Manhattan Court Division after already undergoing one before leaving Rikers Island for court.
Payment amounts will depend on the number of qualifying strip searches an individual experienced and the total number of claimed incidents submitted across the class, the same outlet reports. Class members can file either an online claim form or a printed one by mail, and JPay is available for anyone currently still in DOC custody. Payout options include PayPal, Venmo, paper check, and JPay. A legal representative may also submit a claim on behalf of a deceased class member, provided they include proof of death and authority to act for the estate. Settlement payments may be reduced by child support liens, certain government liens, or other judgments.
Deadlines, Fees, and Who's Named
Both the claim deadline and the opt-out deadline fall on November 26, 2026, and a fairness hearing is scheduled for January 29, 2027, before final approval and distribution of payments. Class counsel is Geller Rubinstein LLP, and the settlement is being administered by Verita Global through the Lewis, et al. v. City of New York, et al. Settlement Administrator, with a mailing address at P.O. Box 301132, Los Angeles, CA 90030-1132. Attorneys' fees and expenses are capped at up to $9,332,400, settlement administration costs are capped at up to $500,000, and service awards for class representatives total $75,000, broken down as $37,500 per representative.
Louis A. Molina is named as a defendant in the case in his capacity as the DOC commissioner during much of the class period. Molina served as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction from January 1, 2022, through December 8, 2023, before Mayor Eric Adams appointed him Assistant Deputy Mayor for Public Safety, according to NYC.gov. The Department of Correction itself is also named as a defendant in the suit.
A Legal Standard With a Long History
The core constitutional issue traces to Second Circuit precedent set in cases like Shain v. Ellison, which established that law enforcement and correctional agencies cannot strip-search pre-trial detainees without individualized reasonable suspicion that they're concealing weapons or contraband, according to S.D.N.Y. federal court records. That standard is the legal backbone of the claim that a second, redundant strip search — performed without any new suspicion — violated detainees' rights once they'd already been cleared at Rikers.
This isn't the first time the city's jail system has faced a multi-million-dollar reckoning over strip-search practices. In March 2010, New York City agreed to a $33 million settlement in McBean v. City of New York covering roughly 100,000 pre-trial detainees who were illegally strip-searched upon admission for minor or non-felony offenses between 1999 and 2007, according to Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP. Nearly a decade earlier, in January 2001, the city finalized a $50 million settlement in Tyson v. City of New York for more than 60,000 pre-arraignment arrestees subjected to blanket strip searches, per the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. And in November 2021, a federal judge approved a $12.5 million settlement in Grottano v. City of New York covering 12,500 jail visitors who were subjected to unconstitutional invasive strip and body cavity searches between 2012 and 2019, as reported by Prison Legal News.
Part of a Bigger Fiscal Picture
The $28 million payout lands amid a broader surge in the city's litigation costs. New York City paid out a record $1.94 billion in total legal claims and lawsuit settlements in fiscal year 2024, a 33.8% jump over the $1.5 billion paid the year before, according to the Office of the New York City Comptroller. A separate July 2024 report from the Comptroller's office found that the annual cost to incarcerate one person in New York City exceeded $556,000, while felony court processing delays drove the city's jail population up more than 57% between 2020 and 2023 — a bottleneck that has kept demand for Rikers-to-court transports high even as legal exposure from those transports has grown.
