Judge Keith Rollins and court and city employees at the Douglasville municipal courthouse are being sent to “sensitivity training,” and signs “advising visitors of court decorum” will be posted around the building, after Rollins ordered Lisa Valentine, a Muslim, to serve a 10-day sentence for contempt of court after refusing on to comply with courthouse rules mandating the removal of “headgear” and cursing at court officials, according to the Associated Press.

“Kelley Jackson, a spokeswoman for Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker, said state law doesn’t permit or prohibit head scarfs,” said an AP report at the time of the incident. “‘It’s at the discretion of the judge and the sheriffs and is up to the security officers in the court house to enforce their decision,’ she said.”

Valentine, “who recently moved to Georgia from New Haven, Conn.,” claimed the court order to comply with the stated courthouse rules “reminded her of stories she’d heard of the civil rights-era South.”

“I just felt stripped of my civil, my human rights,” she told the AP.

She was released early after the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a “Muslim activist” group which could be more aptly named Council for Preferential Treatment for Muslims, “urged federal authorities to investigate the incident as well as others in Georgia.”

According to the AP:

In a press release this week, police dispute the details of the incident, but acknowledge an officer should have offered Valentine the option of an alternate hearing at a different location.

The release said Valentine repeatedly used the expletive “B***S***”, told the bailiff that the judge was “racist,” pointed her finger toward the officer, and “became loud enough that she attracted the attention of another officer.”

The report didn’t say whether the non headgear policy in the Douglasville courthouse would be modified; just that decorum advisory signs would be posted and the courthouse staff would soon be attending classes to learn how to be “sensitive” to those they didn’t previously recognize as being protected minorities who are above the rules.

Douglasville Police Department officers will also be sent to “sensitivity and cultural diversity training,” according to CNN
.