Trial to determine if Texas school’s punishment of a Black student over his hair violates new law
ANAHUAC, Texas — A trial will take place Thursday to determine whether a black high school student in Texas can be punished by his district for refusing to change his hairstyle, which he and his family say is protected by a new state law banning race-based practices. her discrimination.
At issue is whether Darryl George’s months-long punishment for violating his Houston school district’s dress code, which limits the length of boys’ hair, violates the CROWN Act.
The trial is taking place before District Judge Chap Cain III in Anahuac, after the Barbers Hill School District filed a lawsuit seeking clarification of the new law. The trial was scheduled to last one day and Cain was expected to make a decision shortly afterwards.
The CROWN Act, which came into effect in September, bans race-based hair discrimination and prohibits employers and schools from penalizing people because of hair texture or protective hairstyles, including afros, braids, locs, twists or Bantu knots.
“I love my hair, it is sacred and it is my strength,” George has said in court documents.
The Barbers Hill School District said George’s long hair, which he wears in tied and twisted locks on his head, violates dress code policy because it falls below the collar, eyebrows or earlobes when left loose. The district has said other students with locomotives are following the height policy.
George, an 18-year-old junior, has not been in his regular class at Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu since August 31. Instead, he either served an in-school suspension or spent time in an off-site disciplinary program. .
In court documents, the school district claims its policy does not violate the CROWN Act because the law does not mention or cover hair length.
In a paid advertisement that appeared in the Houston Chronicle in January, Barbers Hill Superintendent Greg Poole wrote that districts with a traditional dress code are safer and have better academic performance and that “Americanness requires conformity.”
But Allie Booker, George’s attorney, has argued that Texas lawmakers who wrote the CROWN Act had the preservation of hair length in mind, since many of the hairstyles protected by the new law require hair to be long.
Several of the lawmakers who wrote the CROWN Act were expected to testify on George’s behalf.
One of them, state Rep. Rhetta Bowers, said in an affidavit that “height is protected because it is essentially why protective styles are worn.”
George’s family has also filed a formal complaint with the Texas Education Agency and filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, along with the school district, claiming they failed to enforce the CROWN Act to force. The lawsuit is before a federal judge in Galveston.
Barbers Hill’s hair policy was previously challenged in a May 2020 federal lawsuit filed by two other students. Both withdrew from high school, but one returned after a federal judge issued a temporary injunction, saying the student showed “a substantial likelihood” that his rights to freedom of expression and freedom from racial discrimination would be violated if the student was not allowed to return to campus. That lawsuit remains pending.
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