KENT COUNTY, Mich. (WWJ) – The Kent County Sheriff’s Office in West Michigan is facing a federal lawsuit as a woman claims she was forced to take off her hijab for a booking photo.
Last May 23-year-old Jannah Hague of Grand Rapids was being booked after she and her husband were arrested for a domestic dispute. She was not charged.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations-Michigan chapter filed the lawsuit against the Kent County Sheriff’s Office, claiming her First Amendment rights were violated when she was asked to take off her hijab. A hijab is a religious head covering worn by women of Islamic faith.
Attorney Amy Doukoure says was Hague made to remove her hijab, which she says is “very offensive,” as Muslim women wear their hijab at all times when they’re in public or in the presence of men who are not close family relatives.
Doukoure tells WWJ not only was Hague ordered to remove the hijab, the photo was also shared with the public.
“It’s more than just the removal itself. What they actually did is they removed her hijab and then they published that photograph without her hijab on a public-facing website. It has been removed, which we’re very thankful for, but what you know is that once something’s on the internet, it’s never truly gone,” Doukoure told WWJ.
In filing the $75,000 lawsuit, Doukoure says the goal is for the sheriff's office to change their policy requiring women to remove their hijabs for booking photos, as some departments across the state of Michigan have done.
“After several months of going back and forth with the sheriff’s office, without any real indication that they were willing to take steps necessary to fix their outdated policy, we filed this lawsuit in the hope that we can get a federal judge to declare that their policy is unconstitutional,” Doukoure said.
CAIR-Michigan has also represented several other women who went through similar experiences in Metro Detroit, according to a report from The Detroit News. Similar lawsuits have previously been filed in Ferndale, Detroit and Dearborn, according to the report.
Hague was being booked after she and her husband were arrested for a domestic dispute in May. She was not charged.