A Muslim woman was forced to remove her hijab for a booking photo at a Tennessee jail, where an intake officer promised that the mugshot wouldn’t be made public — then it was, a federal lawsuit says.
Layla Soliz had one mugshot taken without her hijab , which she wears every day as part of her Muslim faith, and a second photo taken of her wearing the religious headscarf at the detention facility in Knox County on May 15, 2024, according to a complaint filed Oct. 7.
That day, she was arrested on a minor misdemeanor charge during a pro-Palestinian demonstration at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and was detained for hours with her hands bound inside a van with other demonstrators, the complaint says.
After Soliz was booked in jail and had her mugshots taken, a sergeant with the Knox County Sheriff’s Office published the booking photo of Soliz without her hijab online to the sheriff’s office’s website, the complaint says.
This violated the sheriff’s office’s policy on processing inmates and Soliz’s religious rights, according to the complaint, which says the policy prohibits publishing photos of arrestees without their religious head coverings on.
Hundreds of people saw the photo of Soliz without her hijab, which she wears “in the presence of men who are not family members,” according to the complaint.
“An unknowable number of people” and a third-party website downloaded the image and it was then uploaded to the third-party website’s “public mugshot database for the world to see,” the complaint says.
Knox County Sheriff Tom Spangler is accused of refusing to destroy the mugshot showing Soliz, who was released from custody following her arrest, according to the complaint.
Now she is suing Spangler, the sergeant accused of publishing her booking photo online and Knox County.
“The defendants’ mistreatment of Mrs. Soliz and their disrespect for her religious rights has scarred her,” the complaint says.
The sheriff’s office’s communications director Kimberly Glenn referred McClatchy News’ request for comment to the Knox County Law Directors’ Office on Oct. 8. The office didn’t immediately respond to McClatchy News.
“State and federal law — not to mention Knox County’s own booking policy — forbade Knox County officials from violating Mrs. Soliz’s religious rights in the way they did,” Soliz’s Nashville-based attorney Daniel A. Horwitz, of Horwitz Law PLLC, said in a news release.
According to the lawsuit, Soliz’s booking photo was published online by the sergeant after a sheriff’s office night shift commander and a lieutenant told him not to publicize it.
The complaint says that the sheriff’s office’s policy only allows booking photos of arrestees wearing their religious head coverings to be publicly released — and that photos of them without head coverings are supposed to be stored in an “identification system for documentation purposes only.”
The county and sergeant “had no valid or compelling penological reasons for uploading and publishing the Plaintiff’s uncovered booking photograph to the Knox County Sheriff’s Office’s public website,” the complaint says.
Soliz was charged with trespassing in connection with the pro-Palestinian demonstration in May, Horwitz told McClatchy News. The charge is still pending, he said.
In a similar civil case, a $100,000 settlement was reached after another Muslim woman represented by Horowitz was forced to remove her hijab for a booking photo in Rutherford County, Tennessee, McClatchy News previously reported.
An intake officer had threatened Sophia Johnston with indefinite jail time if she didn’t take off her hijab for her mugshot in August 2023, according to a federal lawsuit filed about a week later.
Rutherford County agreed to pay Johnston the settlement amount and “destroyed” her mugshots, Horwitz announced in January.
The county updated its booking and jail policies as of Jan. 24 to require employees “to respect the religious beliefs and practices” of people in their custody.
Soliz, with her lawsuit, is asking the court to issue an injunction ordering the Knox County Sheriff’s Office to delete the mugshot of her without her hijab and to prevent it from being publicized further.
Soliz is seeking at least $250,000 in damages and demands a jury trial.
“We look forward to vindicating Mrs. Soliz’s religious rights in court, and we intend to secure a permanent policy change that will prevent further violations like this from happening in Knox County again,” Horwitz said.
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