The American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia announced that the District of Columbia has agreed to settle a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of Lourdes Ashley Hunter over her arrest in November 2016.
The lawsuit challenged the actions of four Metropolitan Police Department officers who entered her home and arrested her without a warrant. Hunter was arrested in her home following a dispute between Hunter and her neighbors about the level of noise coming from her apartment.
Hunter is the executive director and co-founder of the Trans Women of Color Collective.
Police officers came to the apartment for what they described as an investigation of “a possible assault,” then entered Hunter’s apartment without a warrant, according to the ACLU. Hunter said she suffered injuries when officers arrested her.
The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia declined to prosecute Hunter.
The lawsuit, filed in February, charged that the warrantless home entry and arrest violated the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures as well as D.C. law, which prohibits most warrantless arrests for alleged misdemeanors, according to the ACLU.
