The High Court of Justice on Sunday struck down two clauses of the police code of regulations that allowed officers to demand to see identity documents of an individual without cause.

The decision is the culmination of a years-long legal battle by several civil rights groups, which alleged that the clauses in question enabled police to use racial profiling to stop citizens, demand to see ID, and interrogate them.

The opinion for the unanimous ruling was written by Justice Yael Willner, with Supreme Court President Isaac Amit and Justice David Mintz concurring.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), one of the primary petitioners in the case, welcomed the decision as a “historic ruling” that would prevent “arbitrary” police demands for individuals to show ID based merely on their outward appearance, in particular specific ethnic groups in Israel such as Arabs, and Ethiopian and Mizrahi Jews.

In 2019, ACRI, together with the Association of Ethiopian Jews and other groups, filed a petition to the High Court asking it to bar police from stopping people in the street for the purpose of presenting ID, without any suspicion of them having committed a........

© The Times of Israel