Lawyers challenge police ID checks
Rules on police powers to ask for ID are too vague and could breach people's constitutional rights, campaign group says
LAWYERS have launched a legal challenge against police identity checks, claiming too many of them are arbitrary and anti-constitutional.
Some fifty members of the Syndicat des Avocats de France union are behind the campaign to demand that France's top constitutional judges re-examine the rules.
They claim the French penal code is too vague in defining when an ID check is appropriate - and that people are being singled out based on their race. It is impossible to obtain figures on this because data on ethnic origin cannot be gathered under French law.
The lawyers are using a relatively new measure that allows anyone to challenge a French law that they feel does not respect the rights guaranteed in the constitution.
Paris avocat William Bourdon, who is leading the campaign, said: "Thousands of ID checks are carried out every day in France. The law is extremely broad and there is no way for a judge to verify the reason for the check."
The legal challenge has the support of the Open Society Justice Intitiative, an American human rights organisation backed by billionaire George Soros.
The group published a report in 2009 which found that people of African descent were up to seven times more likely to be stopped by police in certain parts of Paris.
France's constitutional court issued a warning as early as 1993 about "widespread" ID checks and how they might not be compatible with people's civil liberties.
