Barbers Hill ISD Stands Firm: Defending Community Rights Amid Dress Code Dispute

TFD – Delve into the ongoing legal clash between Barbers Hill ISD and a student over school dress codes and discrimination.

On Thursday, a Texas judge will hear arguments over the applicability of the state’s CROWN Act, which forbids discrimination based on natural hair and hairstyles, to school dress codes that set length restrictions on those hairstyles.

The Barbers Hill Independent School District and Darryl George, a teenager from the Houston area who has been suspended from his high school for months due to the length of his locs hairdo, may finally put an end to their months-long legal battle at the trial.

Under the district’s dress code, male students’ hair length is restricted although locs hairstyles are permitted. “Boys’ hair will not extend below the top of a t-shirt collar, below the ear lobes, or below the eyebrows,” the statement reads.

The Barbers Hill Independent School District’s clothing and grooming code policy, which limits student hair length, was challenged in a declaratory judgment action filed by the district in September of last year. The district asked the court to rule on whether the regulation violates the CROWN Act.

George and his family contend that the state’s CROWN ACT forbids such practices, which is why they have refused to cut the teen’s hair. Additionally, they have launched a federal civil rights lawsuit against Texas state leaders, including Governor Greg Abbott, and school administrators, claiming that their failure to uphold state law has resulted in emotional distress.

George told reporters before to the trial that being in school suspension and alone for the majority of the academic year has been “very lonely.”

“To feel close to my people, to feel my ancestors, that’s why I started my dreads,” George explained.

Simply said, it enrages me greatly. that after all these years, after everything we’ve gone through to fight for Black history, we still have to keep doing this over and over. It’s absurd.

As she expressed gratitude to supporters “for making us stand strong,” his mother Darresha broke down in tears.

“This is going to be an amazing day.” Today, justice will be served, George declared. “I’m happy, but I’m nervous.”

Barbers Hill Independent School District Superintendent Greg Poole told CNN in a statement released before to the trial that the district looks forward to the matter being “legally resolved.”

The Texas CROWN Act safeguards the wearing of twists, braids, and locs as well as the texture of hair. According to Poole, “those with agendas want to make the CROWN Act a free pass for student expression.”

Poole also told CNN “hair length of male students is only constitutionally protected for Native American students.”

According to an earlier CNN article, Poole said that “being an American requires conformity with the positive benefit of unity” in a full-page advertisement published in the Houston Chronicle in January.

“Even if that path leads us to the U.S. Supreme Court, Barbers Hill ISD will continue to make decisions to protect and fight for the rights of its community to set the standards and expectations for our school district,” he stated in the advertisement.