A Muslim woman who says she was forced to remove her hijab for a mugshot after being arrested at an immigration protest has launched a lawsuit against the Louisville Metro Department of Corrections.
24-year-old Clara Ruplinger had been out protesting against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency’s role in enforcing the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” family separation policy at a July 2018 rally when she was arrested.
Upon being booked at the corrections department, Ruplinger said she was told by a female officer that she would have to remove her headscarf for an evaluation, but would be able to put it back on before a mugshot was taken, the protester’s attorney, Soha Saiyed told local broadcaster WHAS11, an ABC affiliate.
Ruplinger’s attorneys Jeremiah Reece and Soha Sayed said that it is against her religion to show her hair to men who are unrelated to her, which she said made it even more puzzling why that photo was made public, instead of the one with her hijab.
“There is no explanation whatsoever and has been no explanation for why they decided that that was the photograph that they would make publicly available,” Reece said.
At the time, Metro Corrections’ booking process policy stated photographing and fingerprinting is to identify marks or other physical features. Those rules were in place since 2010.
“So much pressure comes with wearing a hijab in Western society,” the young activist said. She confirmed that the police put a lot of pressure on her to remove her hijab so they could take her mugshot without the religious headdress on her person.
Prior to filing the lawsuit, Reece and Sayed reached out to Mayor Greg Fischer and the county’s attorney’s office.
“The initial response from them was well we didn’t think we did anything wrong and we don’t think the law was violated,” Sayed said. “Then it was – well we still don’t think we did anything wrong, but here are those policy changes that we currently made.”
In February 2019, however, the Louisville Metro Department of Corrections updated its policies to ensure that inmates would be allowed to keep on any religious headwear during a mugshot.
“Then it was—well we still don’t think we did anything wrong, but here are those policy changes that we currently made,” Saiyed said.
While the department has updated its policies, Ruplinger is asking that officials remove her mugshot from public records.
Her attorneys are also asking that the city pay damages, though it is still unclear how much they will seek in compensation.
According to AWM:
Police arrested Ruplinger when they saw the Muslim woman joining forces with other protestors in downtown Louisville. She was part of a protest that blocked elevators to the immigration courts due to the immigration problems America was facing at the time. Although she was in the middle of chaos and a near-violent reaction from the police, she said her faith and her hijab gave her strength.
Ruplinger was arrested for joining the Louisville protests against President Trump’s anti-immigration agenda. For her first mugshot, she wore her hijab. However, the police forced her to take a second mugshot with the religious headdress removed.
Watch the video below for more details:
Hey if you want to protest, and you did something to get arrested, then to bad ! It’s time to stop catering to the Islamic faith.