By Aswad Walker
From – https://defendernetwork.com/
Reprinted – by Texas Metro News
This week, a Houston-area judge ruled that Barbers Hill ISD has not violated Texas’ CROWN Act after the district repeatedly suspended Darryl George, a Black student, for the length of his dreadlocks, even though that length was within the bounds of the Barbers Hill dress code.
Barbers Hill ISD is thus free to continue punishing George in any way they see fit. George’s attorney, Allie Booker, plans to appeal the ruling and push for a federal injunction against the school district.
“Cases like this are exactly what appeals are for,” Booker said. “If, in the end, you’re only affecting a small class, it’s discriminatory… Over my body, we’ll be back here.”
Rep. Ron Reynolds, co-author of the CROWN Act, which became law in Texas last Sept .1, says he intends to create a new version of the CROWN Act that includes protections for hair length during next year’s legislative session.
Barbers Hill High School junior George (18), has been repeatedly suspended from the school located in Mont Belvieu, just east of Houston, for refusing to cut or alter his dreadlocks – a natural hairstyle protected by the CROWN Act.
George’s family and legal team say his hair is protected under the CROWN Act, which prohibits race-based hair discrimination against students and employers, while the school district claims George has been in violation of the district’s grooming policy due to the length of his hair, not the style.
But again, as pictures of George have repeatedly shown over the entirety of this ordeal, his hair does not extend below the imaginary line set by the district.
According to the district’s student handbook, a male student’s hair cannot “be gathered or worn in a style that would allow the hair to extend below the top of a t-shirt collar, below the eyebrows, or below the ear lobes when let down.” George has refused to cut his hair but has worn it up in a style that doesn’t go past his neck, eyebrows, or earlobes.
The trial comes months after Barbers Hill ISD filed a lawsuit asking a district judge to weigh in.
During the recent hearing, Booker argued that the district’s policy wasn’t gender-neutral and discriminated against hairstyles like dreadlocks which, by nature, “have to be long in order to braid it and to lock it,” according to Booker.
However, Judge Chap B. Cain III sided with Barbers Hill ISD.
Both before and after the hearing, George and his mother were said to be visibly distraught and frustrated.
“It’s put a lot of emotions on me — Anger, sadness,” said George. “Throughout all these years, throughout all the fighting for the Black history that we’ve already done, we still have to do this again and again and again. It’s ridiculous.”
Still, the federal lawsuit, filed by George’s mother back in September, continues to move through the court system. That lawsuit asks Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to enforce the CROWN Act on behalf of her son. She also filed a complaint against Barbers Hill ISD with the Texas Education Agency (TEA), alleging the school district has harassed and mistreated her son over his hair. An investigation into those allegations remains open, according to a spokesperson for the TEA.
In January, Barbers Hill ISD superintendent Greg Poole took out a full-page ad in the Houston Chronicle to, as described by many in Houston’s Black community, “bully” George into complying with the ISD’s edicts.
