Leila Solis, a Muslim, has filed a lawsuit against the Knox County Mayor's Office in Tennessee in federal court over a photo taken of her without a hijab after her arrest on May 15 during a pro-Palestinian protest.

According to the lawsuit filed on October 7, Solis was arrested along with 10 other protesters on the University of Tennessee campus for criminal trespassing, and during Solis's booking, officers from the Knox County Sheriff's Office took her picture with and without the hijab.
Solis is now demanding at least $250,000 in damages and the removal of her photo from the sheriff's office database. She also wants to amend KCSO policy so that women who wear hijabs do not have to remove their head coverings for their photos to be taken in the future. The lawsuit states: "Demanding a devout Muslim woman to remove her hijab in front of men who are not family members is humiliating and degrading – akin to demanding that a woman remove her shirt in public."
The lawsuit claims there was no reason to post the uncovered photo of Ms. Solis on the KCSO website, let alone to take a booking photo without the hijab in the first place.

Additionally, the lawsuit states that KCSO and Police Chief Tom Spangler "retained the uncovered booking photo of Ms. Solis and refused to dispose of it."

Solis told Knox News in an interview earlier this year: "My rights to freedom of expression have not only been violated, but my religious freedom has also been."