Ohio State protesters say religious rights were violated

Protesters arrested April 25 at a demonstration on the Ohio State University campus against Israel’s military actions in Gaza say police forced women to remove religious head coverings and refused to provide space for arrestees to pray.

Mazen Rasoul, a Columbus attorney representing many of the 36 people arrested during the protest, said police actions that night violated protesters’ religious liberties.

“People’s rights are being taken from them,” Rasoul said. “People are being suppressed by the police. Extreme force has been applied against them unjustifiably. And unfortunately, everyone’s been silent about it.”

OSU spokesman Ben Johnson said in an email the university could not “speak specifically about each individual arrest that occurred.”

“It is possible that some head coverings may have inadvertently fallen off while officers were attempting to arrest some individuals,” Johnson said.

The Ohio Highway Patrol, which assisted OSU police with arrests at the protests, said in a statement the agency was not aware of any instances in which officers intentionally removed religious head coverings during the events of April 25.

A hijab refers to a head covering, often a scarf, that many Muslim women wear over their hair, neck and ears in public or in the presence of men who are not members of their immediate family. Other Muslim women do not cover their hair at all, and some choose more conservative coverings, such as the burka, which fully covers the entire body and face.

Muslims also typically pray at five scheduled times per day. The prayers consist of a specific set of movements in which worshippers kneel and touch their hands and forehead to the ground. A cleansing ritual precedes the five prayers, and Muslims often use a prayer mat rather than kneeling or placing their faces directly on the floor.

One woman who spoke at the April 29 Columbus City Council meeting detailed many grievances with the arrest process. She told the council she suffered a concussion during her arrest, witnessed arrest photos of women taken without their hijabs and was refused space to pray after being placed in a crowded holding cell with 20 other women.

“When we arrived at the jail, there were three hijabi women amongst us, two of which their hijabs were forcibly removed, one of which her hijab wasn’t returned until I made a scene, all of which were forced to take mugshots without their hijabs,” the woman said.

Another protester, Shayan Parsai, told the council that police kept arrestees in a hot, cramped transport vehicle outside the jail for hours.

Rasoul said people arrested received no space to pray or prayer rugs. He said he knew of three or four incidents in which women’s hijabs were removed. In one, he saw a woman being dragged by police to a vehicle for transport with her head uncovered.

“She was shouting, ‘Put my hijab on, put my hijab on,’ and everyone … including myself, were shouting to put her hijab back on,” Rasoul said.

Rasoul said one of the officers pulled the woman’s hood up to cover her head, but the hood was later removed.

Women who wear hijabs have often worked for most of their lives to cover their heads in public, Rasoul said, and it’s very distressing for them to be photographed without it — especially in a mugshot, which news outlets may publish for their families and communities to see.

“Once it’s out there, it’s out there, and now their images without their headscarves are out there, and they really are really, really outraged by it,” Rasoul said.

Franklin County Sheriff spokeswoman Maria Durant said arrestees must be processed at the jail to ensure they are properly identified, medically stable and are not bringing contraband into the facility. During that process, religious head coverings are searched for contraband and returned.

“Any mask or other items obscuring an arrestee’s face or head must be removed for the identification photograph,” Durant said. “Every effort is made to accommodate the sincerely held religious beliefs of all arrestees.”

Durant added that because the arrestees were in the jail overnight and released in the morning, their release occurred before requests for religious accommodations — such as those for Halal and Kosher meals — were processed.

Rasoul said no current legal precedent in Ohio forbids police from removing religious coverings. The legal issue has played out elsewhere, though, as recently as last month.

On April 5, New York City agreed to pay $17.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit after two women were forced to remove their hijabs while police took their mugshots. One of the women said she felt “exposed and violated” while the police took her picture.

The New York City Police Department changed its policy in 2020 in response to the lawsuit, allowing people to be photographed in religious coverings as long as their faces weren’t covered.

Over 3,600 people whose religious coverings were removed for NYPD photos could be eligible for payments between $7,000$13,000 as part of the settlement.

Rasoul said such a lawsuit is necessary in Ohio to stop police from removing hijabs and that the arrested protesters are considering filing one.

“It seems to me ... that the police only operate under the threat of lawsuits and court injunctions,” Rasoul said. “This should be common sense that this should not happen. But it looks like they need to have it set by a court or an injunction for them to follow through with it, and possibly lose a lot of money from taxpayers money in paying off settlements to those who were affected by this.”