Summarize in up to four sentences.: She was forced to remove her hijab for a mug shot, she says. Now, she’s suing.
Sophia Johnston, 37, said taking off her hijab in front of five men ‘scarred her emotionally’

By Jonathan Edwards
September 5, 2023 at 12:04 a.m. EDT

Sophia Johnston says she was forced to remove her hijab for a mug shot by officials in Rutherford County, Tenn. (Sophia Johnston)
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Before Sophia Johnston’s arrest two weeks ago, no man outside her family had seen her hair since childhood, according to a recently filed lawsuit.

But on Aug. 22, she was arrested and then booked into the main jail in Rutherford County, Tenn., where an intake officer allegedly gave her a choice: remove her hijab for a mug shot or stay in jail indefinitely.

Johnston, a devout Muslim, relented. She took off the headscarf in front of five men — an “indignity” that has “scarred her emotionally,” the lawsuit states.

“I’m just like trying so hard to not cry, you know, not to break down,” she told WSMV. “I can’t show these people that they broke me, because I felt in that point, that’s what they wanted me to do.”

Now, Johnston, 37, is suing Rutherford County, Sheriff Mike Fitzhugh and three of his law enforcement officers, alleging they prevented her from exercising her religion and violated federal and state law by doing so.

Rutherford County, the sheriff’s office and Fitzhugh did not immediately respond Monday to requests for comment from The Washington Post.

In a 13-page lawsuit filed on Aug. 29 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, Johnston accuses those officials of forcing her to violate her religious beliefs and expose her hair to men outside her family for the first time in decades.

“Citizens have the right to practice their religion without unreasonable governmental interference,” Johnston’s attorney, Daniel Horwitz, wrote in a statement to The Post.

On Aug. 22, Johnston was driving in Mt. Juliet in neighboring Wilson County when an officer pulled her over for a broken taillight, her lawsuit states. During the traffic stop, the officer learned of an outstanding arrest warrant stemming from a six-year-old misdemeanor charge of driving on a suspended license, according to the suit, which adds that Johnston did not remember the charge and “had no idea that she had ever missed a court date.”

Johnston, who lives in Mt. Juliet, was arrested and booked at the Wilson County Sheriff’s Office, where an intake officer, after initially insisting Johnston remove her hijab, relented and allowed her to take a photo with it on, the suit states.


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Because the misdemeanor charge and arrest warrant originated in Rutherford County, Johnston was then transferred to the sheriff’s office there, where she once again went through the booking process, including another mug shot, according to the suit. When an intake officer asked her to remove her hijab, Johnston protested, saying that she didn’t want to with five men present and “begged she be permitted to wear her hijab for her booking photo due to her religious faith,” the suit alleges.

The intake officer contacted a superior to ask about Johnston’s request, the suit states. After doing so, the officer allegedly told Johnston that her superior had denied it, saying the county’s official booking policy required her to take a photo without the hijab. Johnston kept protesting, and the intake officer allegedly told her that “she would remain in jail unless and until she removed her hijab and agreed to take her booking photo without it.”

Johnston, a mother of eight children, “could not afford to be incarcerated indefinitely,” according to her lawsuit. She removed her hijab “under strenuous protest” in front of the five men as her mug shot was taken, the lawsuit states.

Johnston was released from the Rutherford County jail around 1:30 a.m. on Aug. 23, about four hours after her arrest in Mt. Juliet, Horwitz said in a statement.

Since then, she “lives in daily fear that her now freely accessible booking photo — which is also a public record in Tennessee — will be viewed and disseminated in contravention of her religious faith,” the suit alleges.

In her suit, Johnston is asking the court to ban county officials from disseminating her booking photo and to force them to purge it from their records.

Other Muslim women have sued after their religious practices clashed with law enforcement protocol. In 2019, one woman in Minnesota received $120,000 to settle a lawsuit in which she alleged that she was forced to remove her hijab during “one of the most humiliating and harmful experiences” of her life, the Associated Press reported. Aida Shyef Al-Kadi said she filed her suit because she “knew that I did not want any other Muslim woman to experience what I did.”

In 2020, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) agreed it would no longer force women to remove their hijabs and would train officers to “take all possible steps, when consistent with personal safety,” to let inmates keep their religious headwear on to protect “privacy, rights and religious beliefs,” according to United Press International. The NYPD made the concessions in settling a lawsuit that two Muslim women had filed two years earlier after they were allegedly forced to take off their hijabs during the booking process.