Judge Dismisses Majority of Claims in Federal Lawsuit by Black Texas Student Over Hairstyle Punishment
HOUSTON — A Black high school student sued his school, saying that they were racist and sexist when they punished him for not changing his hairstyle. On Tuesday, a federal judge threw out most of the student’s claims in the case.
The decision was another win for the Barbers Hill school district near Houston. The district has said that its policy on limiting the length of male students’ hair is meant to teach discipline while also teaching proper grooming and respect for authority.
But U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown asked in his order if the school district’s rule does more harm than good.
Brown wrote, “Not everything unwanted, annoying, or even harmful is a crime or a constitutional issue.”
The Associated Press called and emailed the school district and George’s lawyer, Allie Booker, on Tuesday to get their thoughts.
The school district said George, 18, couldn’t go to most of his normal high school classes during the 2023–24 school year because his hair was too long. He was a junior. George was either suspended at Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu or sent to a program outside of school to do his time.
The school district says George’s long hair, which he wears to school in twisted and tied locs on top of his head, breaks the rules because if it were to fall, it would hit his shirt collar, eyebrows, or earlobes. The school board said that other students with locs follow the length rule.
Last year, George and his mother, Darresha George, sued the school district, the director, George’s principal, and assistant principal, as well as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, in a federal civil rights case.
The lawsuit also said that George’s sentence goes against the CROWN Act, a new state law that stops hair discrimination based on race. The CROWN Act, which was talked about before the fight over George’s hair and went into effect in September, says that schools and workplaces can’t punish people for the way their hair looks or because they wear protective hairstyles like Afros, braids, locs twists, or Bantu knots.
The lawsuit said that the policy of the school board was mostly being applied to Black students. Brown, however, said that George had not shown “a persistent, widespread practice of disparate, race-based enforcement of the policy.”
The case also said that George’s right to free speech under the First Amendment was being violated. Brown wrote, though, that George’s lawyer couldn’t point to any case law that said hair length “is protected as expressive conduct under the First Amendment.”
Brown didn’t believe any of George’s claims that his 14th Amendment rights to due process were being abused. Abbott, Paxton, the superintendent of the school district, and other school workers were also taken out of the case.
His only decision was to uphold a claim of sex discrimination because the school district did not have clear rules about why girls could have long hair but boys could not.
“The claim moves past the first stage because the district doesn’t explain why its dress code makes sex-based distinctions,” Brown said.
In February, a state judge decided in the school district’s lawsuit that its punishment does not break the CROWN Act. This led to Brown’s order.
At the end of his decision, Brown brought up a case from 1970 in which a judge decided against an El Paso, Texas, school district that tried to keep a male student from enrolling because the length of his hair was against district policy. In the end, an appeals court rejected the El Paso judge’s decision.
In the El Paso case, the judge wrote that “the presence and enforcement of the hair-cut rule causes far more disruption of the classroom instructional process than the hair it seeks to prohibit.”
Brown said about George’s case, “Unfortunately, so too here.”
In May 2020, two other students also sued in federal court against Barbers Hill for its hair policy. Both dropped out of high school, but one came back after a federal judge issued a temporary order, stating that he would be violated of his rights to free speech and not be subject to racial discrimination if he was not allowed to attend. The case is still going on.