A 21-year-old woman has filed a $20 million civil rights lawsuit against an Illinois city, claiming that she was wrongfully accused of stealing another student’s AirPods while still in high school.According to NBC News, the lawsuit was filed late last month in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Attorneys say that their client—Amara Harris—was forced to endure a long, drawn-out investigation over a simple misunderstanding.The lawsuit states that Harris was a junior at Naperville North High School in suburban Chicago when she noticed that her own AirPods were missing. After retracing her steps, she spotted a pair of AirPods near the building’s “Learning Commons.” Believing they were hers, Harris took them and left.After it was “brought to her attention” that the serial number of the AirPods did not match that of her missing pair, Harris turned them over to a school dean. However, about two weeks later, a Naperville Police Department officer approached Harris and issued her a citation for theft.Harris denied the allegations, and refused to pay the $100 fine—culminating in a years-long legal battle that ended with her being found not liable for violating local theft ordinances.

Handcuffs with key sitting on fingerprint card; image by Bill Oxford, via Unsplash.com.

Harris, who is African-American and believes that race played a role in her treatment.“It was just very hard because I was in school with the accusation,” she said. “It was a shocking surprise to me that took a really huge toll on my mental state.”“I was angry,” she added. “I was sad. I felt that I was targeted.”Todd Yeary, an attorney for Harris, said that his client was forced to attend about 50 hearings before the case ever went to trial. Some proceedings were held online—but others required in-person attendance, even after Harris graduated high school and moved out-of-state to attend Spelman College in Georgia.“I think we have a duty to make sure that we not only remedy it for Amara, but as she said, fix it for other students who may have to go through the same,” Yeary said.The complaint names defendants including the city of Naperville and two of its police officers: Juan Leon, who wrote the theft citation, and Leon’s supervisor, Sgt. Jonathon W. Pope.During the trial, Leon testified that there was no evidence to show that Harris had intended to take—or stolen—the other student’s AirPods.Naperville City Attorney Mike DiSanto has since said that the city believes its officers’ actions were justified, and that his office is “prepared to vigorously defend this lawsuit.”“We believe the allegations are without merit,” DiSanto said. “The police officers involved in this matter relied upon independent eyewitness statements from school officials and students in issuing the theft citation to Ms. Harris.”“The fact that the jury acquitted Ms. Harris,” he said, “does not negate the factual basis for the actions of the City and its officers.”But Harris and Yeary suggest that racial prejudice—more than evidence, or well-founded belief—could better explain the initial theft citation, as well as the years-long investigation that followed.“The reason there’s a civil rights aspect to it is that there’s a disparate application of the issuance of tickets on the basis of race,” Yeary said, referring to a recent ProPublica-led investigation that found that African-American students in Illinois receive more citations than their white counterparts.

Sources

After being accused of stealing AirPods in high school, a woman files a federal civil rights lawsuitTicketed at School as a Teen, a Young Black Woman Is Suing an Illinois City for Violating Her Civil RightsTicketed at School as a Teen, a Young Black Woman Is Suing an Illinois City for Violating Her Civil Rights