Photo by Michael Wyke/ Associated Press
On Tuesday, a Texas judge dismissed most of the claims of the black high school student who was punished for his hairstyle. According to U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, Darryl George’s only viable claim is based on gender discrimination.
As ESSENCE previously reported, the now 18-year-old was suspended from school during his penultimate year of high school and placed in an alternative disciplinary facility because he had long hair, which allegedly violated Barbers Hill High School’s dress code and grooming guidelines.
This latest decision follows a state judge’s disappointing ruling in February “in a lawsuit filed by the school district that its punishment did not violate the CROWN Act.”
“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 said other students with curls comply with length guidelines,” the Associated Press reports.
In response, George and his mother, Darresha George, filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court last year against the Barbers Hill School District, its principal, its assistant principal, the district superintendent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Texas Governor Greg Abbott. But Brown’s recent decision excluded Abbott, the district superintendent, other school employees and Paxton as parties to the lawsuit.
The Georges also claimed that their freedom of speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had been violated. Brown also denied this, saying the Georges’ attorney could not cite “case law that says hair length is ‘protected as a form of expression under the First Amendment.'”
In addition, Brown also rejected George’s claims that any violations of due process under 14th There was a change. According to Brown, the sex discrimination lawsuit still stands because “the district does not provide a justification for the gender differences in its dress code and therefore the lawsuit survives this first phase.”
Brown’s decision questioned whether the school district’s policy did more harm than good, writing, “Not everything that is undesirable, annoying, or even harmful constitutes a violation of law, let alone a constitutional problem.” As a highlight of his decision, Brown cited a 1970 case from El Paso, Texas, in which a judge ruled in favor of a male student who was barred from entering a school district because his hair length violated district policy. In that case, the appeals court eventually overturned the lower court judge’s ruling.
“The existence and enforcement of the hair-cutting rule is far more disruptive to the flow of the classroom than the hair it is intended to prohibit,” the judge wrote in the El Paso case. Brown concluded, “Unfortunately, that is the case here as well.”
This is not the first time the Barbers Hill district’s hair policy has been challenged. In 2020, there was another federal lawsuit filed by two other students that is still pending. Both eventually dropped out of the high school, but one of the students returned after being granted a temporary restraining order by a federal judge who stated that “there is a substantial likelihood that his rights to free speech and protection from racial discrimination would be violated if he were barred from attending.”