By Lyn Neeley
March 26, 2026

Portland, Oregon

On March 19, Serine Abuelhawa and Marjannah Hassan, leading Palestinian activists in Portland, won a lawsuit against the Portland police who had illegally forced them to remove their hijabs (religious head coverings) and then to pose for mug shots with them off.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) filed the suit for Abuelhawa and Hassan, which obtained a settlement for $30,000. Portland police must destroy the booking photographs from their database and make policy changes to protect religious head coverings.

On June 8, 2024, Abuelhawa was arrested with seven other people while protesting the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. She was separated from the other protesters after refusing to take off her hijab and refusing to let a male cop pat her down. She told the cops she is a Muslim woman, and it is against her religious beliefs to remove her hijab in public, especially in front of men.

Two female police officers took Abuelhawa to a private jail cell to remove her hijab and check her hair. However, instead of returning the hijab, the cops forced Abuelhawa to spend the day without it. She had to sit for hours in public, get fingerprinted by three male cops and pose for a mug shot without her hijab on.

Aya Beydoun, the attorney for CAIR who filed the suit, said that the police actions were illegal as well as deeply unsettling, offensive and culturally disrespectful.

Beydoun has won dozens of cases against police departments nationally for forcing Muslim women to remove their hijabs and take mug shots without them. In 2017 a Muslim woman from Long Beach, California, won an $85,000 settlement. In January 2025 a woman in Nashville, Tennessee, won a settlement for $100,000, and in April 2025 New York City was forced to pay a $17.5 million settlement on an incident in 2018 involving two Muslim women.

CAIR National Litigation Director Lena Masri, Esq. said that, “CAIR Legal Defense Fund will continue to fight for detained and incarcerated Muslims across the U.S.” (cair.com, March 19)

After her ordeal in 2024, Abuelhawa said: “I remind myself every day that my people in Gaza are going through so much worse. I don’t have the option to be a victim.”