The nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization has filed a lawsuit against Warren County Regional jail and a number of local officials after jail employees allegedly removed a Muslim woman’s hijab and livestreamed her strip search on a TV inside the jail lobby.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) claims the jail took a booking photo of the woman without her hijab and posted the photo to its website.
Aya Beydoun, a legal fellow at CAIR, said the incident took place in April.
She explained that the Muslim American women is identified as Jane Doe in the lawsuit, because her picture without her hijab is still on the jail’s website.
Beydoun said Doe complied with a strip search when she was taken into custody because she believed it was routine.
She added Doe was not aware that the strip search was livestreamed to a television that can be seen in the jail lobby.
“Everyone in the lobby could see her strip search take place,” Beydoun said.
“She’s horrified, she began crying, only to have the situation get worse as she’s taken to have her booking photo and her hijab is deemed inappropriate and she’s forced to remove it.”
CAIR says the lawsuit seeks to have the jail implement a policy prohibiting officers from taking pictures of Muslim women without their hijabs because it’s a violation of their religious rights.
“On your passport, you can wear a hijab, you can wear kufi, a kippah, and other forms of religious head gear, as long as you can still identify the person’s face,” Beydoun said.
“You can wear them on a driver’s license, which our client has a driver’s license and a passport which feature her wearing her hijab.”
Beydoun said CAIR also wants the photo taken off the jail’s website.
Warren County Judge Executive Doug Gorman, Chief Jailer Stephen Harmon, Deputy Jailer Brook Lindsey Harp, and three officers are listed as defendants in the case.
Warren County Jailer Stephen Harmon declined to comment and told WKU Public Radio that the jail does not respond to pending litigation.
