KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The Knox County Sheriff’s Office filed a motion to dismiss a federal lawsuit against the county for publishing a mugshot of a woman without her religious headscarf.
Knox County’s attorney filed the motion to dismiss on July 7. The motion said the sheriff’s office had “voluntarily deleted photos and videos” of Layla Soliz on June 13, 2025. A notice of settlement was filed three days later. On July 14, the judge ordered both parties to file a formal motion of dismissal within the next 30 days.
Soliz filed the lawsuit in October 2024 after she was arrested months earlier and charged with criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor offense. She was participating in the Nakba Day Vigil on the University of Tennessee’s campus, where a group of activists gathered to mourn the communities and lives lost during the Nakba, which the United Nations described as the “mass displacement and dispossession” of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War…