Orange County Sheriff’s officials are reviewing their policy over female prisoners wearing Muslim headscarves – known as hajibs – while in custody.
The current policy requires women to remove the religious garment when taken into custody.
In San Bernardino County this week, officials there agreed to revise their policy and allow women to use a headscarf which would be provided by the county.
Attorneys representing a Rialto woman who sued San Bernardino County regarding her right to wear a hijab called the settlement a victory in having local jurisdictions implement policies that accommodate inmates’ religious rights and said they would be pursuing similar cases in other jurisdictions.
In Orange County jails, inmates are instructed to remove all head coverings, including hats and scarves, said Capt. Tim Board who heads the Central Jail Complex. That policy is in place so that inmates do not hurt others, or themselves, while in custody, he said.
Orange County Sheriff’s officials are currently reviewing their current policy, but it is unknown what, if any changes, will be made, Board said. “That’s going to depend on what we hear from our counsel,” he said.
“There is a way to accommodate religious freedom and jail safety,” said Hector Villagra, director of the Orange County office of the American Civil Liberties Union and one of the attorneys involved in the San Bernardino and a similar care in Orange County.
According to details of the agreement, which were released at ACLU ‘s office in Orange this week, San Bernardino officials agreed to implement policies to allow women to wear the traditional garment, which Medina said is “a reminder of her faith, of the importance of modesty in her religion, and of her religious obligations,” according to the suit.
Jameelah Medina filed a lawsuit against San Bernardino County in Dec. 2007. She was taken into custody two years earlier while riding a MetroLink train with an invalid ticket. She was ordered off the train in Pomona, handcuffed and taken the West Valley Detention Center in San Bernardino County where she was ordered to remove the scarf.
Department policy at the time forbid all head coverings in jails and detention facilities in the county for safety reasons, as well shoelaces, belts, jewelry or braids, according to a spokeswoman with the San Bernardino sheriff’s department. The items were not permitted because they could potentially be used to harm other inmates or themselves.
According to the new policies, which were agreed to in the settlement, deputies in San Bernardino will not require that head scarves be removed in the view of male officers, and inmates will be provided with temporary scarves they can wear while in custody.
Three months before Medina filed her lawsuit, Anaheim resident Souhair Khatib filed a similar case against Orange County, claiming her religious freedom was infringed upon when she was forced to remove her head scarf after she was taken into custody and held in a court holding facility on Nov. 2006.
County officials moved to dismiss several of Khatib’s claims and in March District Court Judge David O. Carter dismissed her claim that the county had violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000. Under the act, governments are prohibited from placing a substantial burden on inmates from exercising their religion.
Under the act, state and federal prisons have instituted policies that allow female inmates to wear headscarves inside jails, Villagra said.
But the county facility where Khatib was held on Nov. 2006 does not fall under the same guidelines as the act states, the judge ruled.
Khatib was taken into custody in Orange County Superior Court while she and her husband were seeking an extension to their sentence of community service. The couple had pled guilty in June 2006 to a misdemeanor charge of welfare fraud. The judge ordered the two be taken into custody and Khatib was ordered to take off her scarf while she was held in the court’s holding facility.
In the March ruling, the judge stated that Religious Land Use act was intended for facilities that hold inmates for a significant amount of time, not court holding facilities like the one Khatib was held in, where inmates are held for only a few hours.
“The factors needed to create the atmosphere of stability inside jails and prisons that allows for exercise of religious freedoms without ‘undermin[ing]…security, discipline, and order…' are utterly absent from courthouse holding facilities,” Carter ruled.
Villagra said attorneys representing Khatib, including himself, have dismissed the other claims in the case and plan to appeal the decision. A notice of appeal was filed in August.
“We think congress intended RLUIPA to have a broad definition. There’s really no distinction between a jail and a holding facility,” Villagra said. “If the federal government can allow a hijab, why can’t the county jail?”
Although the case was settled out of court, Villagra said attorneys plan to contact other local governments in the hopes they will implement similar policies regarding the head coverings.