Policy that demanded Black students cut their locks is discriminatory, Texas court says

A judge ruled on Monday that a Mont Belvieu, Texas, school district’s hair policy is discriminatory, ABC 13 reported.

Barbers Hill High School student DeAndre Arnold was suspended for the length of his dreadlocks in January, McClatchy News reported. District officials had said it wasn’t about race and that dreadlocks are allowed, just not at the length Arnold was sporting them.

“Today’s momentous decision enjoining enforcement of BHISD’s discriminatory dress and grooming policy makes a huge difference for our client, who may now return to class and extracurricular activities after being unfairly deprived of an equal education for many months,” Janai Nelson, associate director-counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), said to ABC 13.

Arnold had said that he had started growing out his dreadlocks in the seventh grade, McClatchy reported.

“Hair is a part of his heritage, culture, his dad is a Trinidadian,” Arnold’s mom said, according to McClatchy News. “How can I put him in a barber chair and say, ‘OK, Deandre, in order to graduate, let me cut your hair.’”

The family said they had several meetings with school officials before winter break regarding the dress code before the district said that Arnold would face suspension if he didn’t cut his hair.

“They said Deandre’s hair can’t touch the collar, ears or in the face,” his mother said, according to McClatchy News. “It never really did, he’s always had it up.”

Arnold’s cousin, Kaden Bradford, was also suspended by school officials after the dress and groom policy was revised in the middle of his sophomore year to prohibit male students from wearing long hair.

Nelson, who also represents Bradford, said the teen “doesn’t have to endure an unjust and educationally-damaging in-school suspension simply for having uncut locs, which are an immutable part of his Black identity and cultural heritage,” NBC News reported.

A month before the decision, ABC reported that the school district board voted not to change its hair code policy.

McClatchy has reached out to the school district for comment on the ruling.

Arnold’s story drew national headlines when the story went viral earlier this year. In January, the teen was surprised by Alicia Keys, who handed him a $20,000 check on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” from Shutterfly, McClatchy reported.

In February, Arnold walked the Oscars’ red carpet in Los Angeles thanks to film director Matthew A. Cherry, who welcomed him as his guest. Cherry’s animated short film “Hair Love” won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short that night.

“We wanted to normalize black hair,” Cherry said in his acceptance speech. “There’s a very important issue that’s out there, it’s the CROWN Act. And if we can help to get it passed in all 50 states it will help stories like DeAndre Arnold’s, who’s our guest tonight, stop happening.”

A copy of the decision from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas can be read here.