BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - A transgender woman who tried to visit her incarcerated brother claims Louisiana prison officers ordered her to remove her underwear and told her she would have to reveal her genitalia before she could leave the facility.

Donald Nelson, whose preferred name is "China," says in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that officers insisted on searching her vehicle after she refused to remove her pants and underwear. Her suit against the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections accuses several unnamed officers at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola of violating her constitutional rights.

The suit says guards stopped Nelson from entering the maximum-security prison last September after a body screening machine detected an "unknown object" in her pants. Corrections department spokesman Ken Pastorick had no immediate comment.