CINCINNATI, Ohio – A federal appeals court on Monday reinstated a lawsuit filed against the city of Cleveland by two people who said they were strip-searched and sprayed with delousing solution after they were booked at the city workhouse for unpaid traffic tickets.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a September 2013 decision by U.S. District Judge Benita Pearson to dismiss a lawsuit filed against the city in 2009 by Tynisa Williams, 26, of Cleveland, and Shawn Bealer, 28, of Amherst.

The appeals court, in a 15-page opinion, said the jailers' treatment of the plaintiffs may have violated their Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures, and that Pearson should not have thrown out the case.

Pearson said she doubted the searches and delousings constituted violations of constitutional rights, and said their challenges of the city workhouse practices "would be futile."

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that jails have the right to strip search and delouse inmates, but the 6th Circuit ruling said Cleveland's practices appeared unreasonable, and treated detainees "as if they were an object or an animal."

The appeals court opinion suggests the jailers use a less-invasive visual search, conducted in private, and that the detainees be permitted to apply their own delousing solution in a shower.

Both of the plaintiffs were arrested separately for suspended driver's licenses after they failed to pay traffic tickets. Neither plaintiff had lice or exhibited any indication that they were infected with the bugs, yet were still forced to undergo "the hose treatment," according to their lawsuit.

Williams was released from the workhouse the same day after paying her fines. Bealer was jailed and deloused twice. In each of the cases, the strip searches and delousings occurred in the presence of other detainees, they said in the lawsuit.

Pearson's "cursory dismissal of the plaintiffs' allegations that their delousing involved physical touching and that they were forced to disrobe in the presence of other detainees substantially underestimated the gravity of the intrusion into their privacy that the jail's conduct perpetrated," the appeals court opinion read.

The appeals court conceded that the jailers may have good reasons for conducting the searches and delousings. But they said that is a matter better resolved at a trial or after a judge has heard all of the evidence.