The settlement of a Muslim woman’s civil-rights lawsuit against Oceana County Jail officials requires no payment but does include creation of a policy for treatment of inmates with religious headwear, the sheriff says.
That policy matches how staff actually treated Fatme Dakroub last year, Sheriff Robert J. Farber said – with dignity, according to him.
“The Oceana County Sheriff’s staff did an excellent job of respecting Dakroub, the complainant, and her religious freedoms,” Farber said in his first detailed comment on the now-dismissed lawsuit. “It is a reflection of what our staff do every day. Pretty proud of how they handled this unusual situation.”
Oceana County is paying no money either to Dakroub or to her attorneys in exchange for permanent dismissal of the lawsuit, according to federal court records at U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan.
The lawsuit was dismissed Monday, April 18, by mutual agreement. Dakroub had sued Farber, the sheriff’s office, the county and three deputies.
The dismissal order does not state whether there was a settlement involving non-monetary issues, but Farber said there was one agreement: “a policy agreement which is exactly what we did with her,” he said.
Dakroub’s attorney, Nabih H. Ayad of Detroit, did not return a call seeking comment.
Dakroub’s now-dismissed lawsuit, which drew national media attention, claimed Oceana County Sheriff’s deputies violated her constitutional rights by making her remove her head scarf when she was booked into the county jail for a traffic violation.
Dakroub is a U.S. citizen who is a practicing Muslim and a resident of the United Arab Emirates.
In her complaint, she stated that as a religious duty she always wears a head scarf, called a hijab, when she is in public or in the presence of men who are not members of her immediate family.
She alleged that after she was brought to the Oceana County Jail May 17, 2015, she was required to remove her hijab in front of three male officers despite her religious objections and despite her request that she be allowed to do it in front of female officers only.
She stated that, after booking, she was placed in a holding cell for approximately three hours without a head scarf in front of the male officers and “multiple other male inmates,” some of whom she said made continual sexual advances.
The lawsuit alleged the deputies’ actions violated Dakroub’s constitutional rights to free exercise of religion and free expression guaranteed by the First and 14th Amendments. It also alleged that she suffered “severe humiliation, mental anguish and emotional distress” as a result of the experience.
The original complaint asked that she be awarded compensatory, punitive and economic damages and attorney fees and costs, and that a federal judge issue an injunction barring Oceana County from “engaging in the unlawful practices” described in the lawsuit. None of those things resulted from the lawsuit.
Many of those allegations were false or misleading, Farber said Monday after the lawsuit’s dismissal.
According to the sheriff:
- Her arrest, by a state Department of Natural Resources officer for careless driving at a state park, came on a busy Sunday on which only three jail deputies were on duty, all of them male. Female deputies could have been called in to help with Dakroub, but that likely would have taken hours, longer than she was actually in jail, Farber said.
- Dakroub was at the jail for a total of one hour and 53 minutes from beginning to end, the sheriff said, based on security video records. She did not spend “approximately three hours” in a holding cell.
- During her time in a cell, she had no contact with male inmates, Farber said. Her complaint that male inmates continually made sexual advances to her “frankly never happened,” Farber said.
- Although Dakroub was required to remove her hijab for security reasons, she was not required to stay bare-headed in a holding cell, Farber said. She was allowed to keep the attached hood of her shirt over her hair.
- Dakroub was bare-headed only briefly, Farber said. That was after she complied with officers’ request to remove her hijab because the officers told her she needed to look like she did on her United Arab Emirates driver’s license so they could verify her identity. That license showed her with no head cover, exposing her hair and full face. She was then allowed to put on her shirt’s hood, which she wore for the jail’s booking photos and continued to wear throughout the rest of her stay at the jail, the sheriff said.
- Dakroub’s complaint stated that Oceana County Sheriff’s deputies arrested her and brought her to the jail. Actually it was state DNR officers.