HOUSTON– A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed most of the allegations in a lawsuit filed by a black high school student who claimed that school officials committed racial and gender discrimination when they punished him for refusing to change his hairstyle.
The ruling was another victory for the Barbers Hill school district near Houston, which had said its policy limiting hair length for male students helped discipline them while teaching them grooming and respect for authority.
But U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown questioned in his order whether the school district’s policy did more harm than good.
“Not everything that is undesirable, annoying, or even harmful constitutes a violation of law, let alone a constitutional problem,” Brown wrote.
The Associated Press left phone and email messages with the school district and George’s attorney, Allie Booker, on Tuesday seeking comment.
George, 18, was excluded from regular high school classes for most of the 2023-24 school year when he was in 11th grade because the school district felt his hair length violated the dress code. George was either suspended from school at Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu or entered an out-of-school disciplinary program.
The district argues that George’s long hair, which he wears to school in tied and twisted curls on top of his head, violates policy because if worn loose, it would fall below his shirt collar, eyebrows or earlobes. The district has stated that other students with curls comply with length guidelines.
George and his mother, Darresha George, filed a civil rights violation lawsuit in federal court last year against the school district, the district superintendent, its principal and assistant principal, as well as Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The lawsuit also alleges that George’s punishment violates the CROWN Act, a new state law that prohibits racial discrimination based on hair. The CROWN Act, which was debated before the controversy over George’s hair and took effect in September, prohibits employers and schools from punishing people based on their hair texture or protective hairstyles such as Afros, braids, curls, plaits or Bantu knots.
The lawsuit alleged that the school district’s policy was enforced primarily on black students, but Brown said George did not demonstrate a “persistent, widespread practice of disparate, racially based policy enforcement.”
The lawsuit also alleged that George’s First Amendment right to free speech was violated. However, Brown wrote that George’s attorney could not cite case law that said hair length “is protected under the First Amendment as expressive conduct.”
Brown denied several allegations that George’s 14th Amendment due process rights were violated. He also removed Abbott, Paxton, the county school board and other school officials from the case.
The only claim he allowed to stand was the accusation of gender discrimination, based on the fact that the school district did not have clearly defined policies about why girls were allowed to have long hair but boys were not.
“Because the district does not provide any justification for the gender differences in its dress code, the lawsuit remains in this initial phase,” Brown said.
Brown’s order came after a state judge ruled in February in a lawsuit filed by the school district that the punishment he imposed did not violate the CROWN Act.
At the end of his ruling, Brown referred to a 1970 case in which a judge ruled against an El Paso, Texas, school district that had attempted to exclude a male student from enrollment because his hair length violated district policy. The El Paso judge’s ruling was later overturned by an appeals court.
The judge in the El Paso case had written that “the existence and enforcement of the hair-cutting rule disrupts the flow of instruction far more than the hair it is intended to prohibit.”
“Unfortunately, that is the case here too,” Brown said of George’s case.
Barbers Hill’s hair policy was also challenged in federal court in a May 2020 lawsuit filed by two other students. Both left the high school, but one returned after a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order, saying there was a “substantial likelihood” that his rights to free speech and protection from racial discrimination would be violated if he were expelled. That lawsuit is still pending.
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