The Legal Aid Society is throwing support behind a new bill that would codify the long held practice – instituted by the 1991 Roundtree v. Brown decision – of detainees being arraigned within 24 hours of arrest, according to the Intercept. In a suit brought in June by Legal Aid, over 400 individuals who had been held more than 24 hours without seeing a judge, Judge James M. Burke of the State Supreme Court ruled in favor of the NYPD, affirming their prerogative to overrule state law during a time of protest.

Attorneys from Legal Aid alleged that cops were “slow-rolling” protesters through the standard procedures as payback for anti-police protests. As a result, protesters were stuck in unsanitary holding pens without masks, and unable to reach loved ones or lawyers.

“The law doesn’t have a looter exception, it doesn’t have a COVID-19 exception,” said Russell Novack, one of the Legal Aid staff attorneys who brought the suit. “This was deliberate, intentional punishment for protesting.”