Warren County Jailer Stephen Harmon and other named defendants disputed claims brought in a lawsuit by a Bowling Green Muslim woman who claimed she was forced to remove her hijab for a booking photo and had her constitutional rights violated during a strip search.

Harmon, Warren County Judge-Executive Doug Gorman, Deputy Jailer Lindsey Harp, Bowling Green Police Department Officer Ben Carroll and two unnamed female deputy jailers, identified in court filings as Officer Smith 1 and Officer Smith 2, were sued in November in U.S. District Court in Bowling Green by a woman who alleged that federal and state constitutional rights protecting her religion were violated.

One of the allegations made in the lawsuit by the woman – that a video monitor above the door outside the room where she was strip searched broadcast footage of the search for anyone in the lobby to see – was called an “egregiously false accusation” by Harmon.

“There are no security cameras in the inmate dressing room – the room where Jane Doe was strip-searched,” Harmon said in an affidavit filed Dec. 28 that accompanied a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. “At no time since I have been jailer have any strip-searches at the Warren County Regional Jail been filmed or broadcasted to a television screen.”

Harmon said that the strip-search was considered necessary because Doe had been charged with second-degree assault (domestic violence), considered a violent felony offense.

The screen outside the room displays images and videos from the jail’s observation cells that house inmates on suicide watch, disciplinary observation or medical observation, Harmon said in the affidavit.

Harmon also noted that jail staff offered Doe a meal tray designed to accommodate Muslims who fast during the holy month of Ramadan, and that allowing her to wear a long-sleeved thermal shirt as part of her jail uniform was another accommodation.

“All clothing must be jail-issued because outside clothing, especially loose-fitting clothing, presents an unreasonable risk to staff and inmate safety,” Harmon said in his affidavit. “That security risk would only be heightened if inmates were allowed to wear loose-fitted clothing (such as an abaya) because inmates can more easily conceal contraband, weapons or even injuries in loose-fitted clothing.”

The woman is identified in the lawsuit as Jane Doe, and is described as a refugee from Bosnia, a lifelong Muslim and a married mother of two who works in Bowling Green as a medical assistant. 

In keeping with religious practice, Doe wears a hijab, a headscarf worn by Muslim women that covers their hair and neck, as well as an abaya, a long-sleeved, full-length dress.

The BGPD arrested Doe on April 6 outside her home and brought her to the jail, where she remained for about four hours before being released on bond.

During the booking process, Doe was asked to remove her hijab for her booking photograph and was strip-searched in a private room by a female deputy jailer. She was then provided a jail-issued uniform with a long-sleeved thermal shirt, requesting the item after being initially issued a uniform with short sleeves, and was given back her hijab, but not her abaya, when she was brought to her cell.

The lawsuit, filed on Doe’s behalf by attorneys with the Council on American-Islamic Relations Legal Defense Fund, claims that Doe asked to wear her hijab during her booking photo, and the request was denied by deputy jailers, which she argued violated her right to practice her faith.

“Her hijab is a pillar of her religious practice and integral to her identity as a Muslim woman,” said Lena Masri, the attorney representing Doe, in the lawsuit. “Appearing in public without hijab or being photographed without wearing hijab and having that photo available to the public is a serious breach of Mrs. Doe’s faith and a deeply humiliating and defiling experience in conflict with her sincerely held religious beliefs.” 

One request Doe made in court filings – that her booking photo be removed by the jail – has been met. In Harmon’s affidavit, the jailer said that, acting on advice last month from his legal counsel, Doe’s booking photo was removed from the jail’s website and official record, and Harmon sent a letter to the BGPD, Kentucky State Police, Kentucky Department of Corrections and FBI asking those agencies to remove the photo from their databases.

Attorney Matthew Cook, representing Gorman, Harmon and the other defendants, filed a motion on Dec. 28 to dismiss the lawsuit, disputing Doe’s claims.

“Many of the plaintiff’s allegations are woefully exaggerated,” Cook said in the motion. “Others are outright false.”

Cook argues that Doe’s First Amendment rights protecting religious expression were not violated by requiring her to remove her hijab for her booking photograph and wear jail-issued clothing, noting that Doe said in her lawsuit that one of the deputies told her that Christian and Jewish inmates were also required to remove head coverings for their booking photographs.

“No allegation suggests … that any person from any religious group is permitted to wear head coverings during a booking photograph at the Warren County Regional Jail,” Cook said in the response. “By all accounts, the jail’s purported booking-photo policy is applied even-handedly, neutrally to all inmates irrespective of their religious identity.”

Cook also argued that the jail’s policy requiring inmates to remove head coverings for their booking photographs serves important governmental interests.

“It allows booking officers to better identify, classify and document prisoners entering their facilities,” Cook said. “So too does a policy requiring inmates to wear jail-issued clothing instead of loose-fitting personal clothing: among other legitimate goals, it furthers safety interests because inmates with loose-fitted clothing can more easily conceal contraband and dangerous weapons.”

Doe had requested the federal court issue an injunction ordering the jail to change its policy so that it would no longer be allowed to take booking photographs of Muslim women without their hijab, and to direct the jail to carry out strip searches without sharing them electronically.

Cook argued that Doe, as a former inmate who does not face a “certainly impending threat” of being jailed, lacked the legal standing to ask the court to grant the injunctions.

Cook said that Gorman is not the final policymaker when it comes to inmate policies at the jail and lacked the authority to ratify the strip search, so he should be dismissed from the suit.

Carroll’s responsibilities ended when the jail took custody of Doe after the officer brought her there and he did not participate in any of the subsequent booking process, Cook said in arguing for Carroll to be dismissed from the suit.

Officer Smith 1 and Officer Smith 2 are described by Cook in the response as “unnamed fictitious parties” who have not been served with any paperwork in the case, and should therefore be dismissed as well.