No legal action has been taken
Como-Pickton CISD and Cumby, Saltillo and Sulphur Bluff ISDs are four of 477 school districts that received letters from the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas last week, asking them to review “unconstitutional and discriminatory” dress and grooming code policies.
“While school districts throughout the country have removed policies that were based on antiquated sex stereotypes, many school districts in Texas still have policies that treat students differently on the basis of their gender, such as requiring different hair and dress standards for male and female students,” said Brian Klosterboer, attorney for the ACLU of Texas in a Sept. 2 statement. “Recent court decisions, including from the U.S. Supreme Court, have found that this type of gender-based discrimination is unconstitutional. School districts need to conform to federal law and fix outdated policies that cause serious harm to students in Texas.”
The four schools approved their dress codes for the 2020-2021 school year in August, and the ACLU of Texas is now asking the districts to “revise their dress and grooming polices to ensure that all students are treated fairly and equally.” No legal action has been taken by the organization.
The letter sent to school districts targeted policies related to “a hair-length requirement that applies only to male but not female students.” The letter comes after a federal court decision between a student and Barbers Hill ISD near Houston stating a gender-based grooming code is “unconstitutional.” In January, the student, De’Andre Arnold, was told by Barbers Hill he would not walk at his graduation ceremony unless he cut his locs.
According to the four schools’ current handbooks, only CPCISD and SISD detail any gender-specific hair length requirements. CISD and SBISD ask students to keep their hair “clean” and “wellgroomed” but do not list a length requirement for male students.
According to CISD Superintendent Shelly Slaughter, the district once had a length requirement for males, but that had changed a few years ago.
“There’s several of our smaller schools for sure had a lot of things like that in place,” Slaughter said. “That’s because of very conservative views, and a lot of small rural schools still hold true to a lot of those things.”
The SBISD 2020-2021 handbook had required male students keep their hair no longer than the collar, but the district’s website now links to a newly updated handbook removing that requirement.
CPCISD’s 2020-2021 student handbook details that male students’ hair should “be no longer than the shirt collar.”
According to CPCISD Superintendent Dr. Greg Bower, the district’s legal counsel is looking further into the matter.
The SISD dress code reads male students’ hair “will not extend over the eyebrows, below the earlobe or past the T-shirt collar.”
Education law firm Eichelbaum Wardell sent a message Sept. 3 in response to the letters, stating the letter “has taken the equivalent of a bottle rocket and tried to claim it is a weapon of mass destruction.” The message further argues the ACLU is using a recent injunction against Barbers Hill ISD too broadly and is “premature” in asking districts to change their dress codes.
“It is true that your policy should leave wiggle room for religious and possibly now racial exceptions, but you can do that by finding compromise, not dropping the policy altogether,” the Eichelbaum Wardell message read. “One example might be to allow students with long hair to pin up their hair to keep it above the collar while at school.”
However, the Texas Association of School Boards in August updated their guidance to school districts in August and pointed to federal court case Betenbaugh v. Needville Indep. Sch. Dist. which held a Native American student “with a sincerely held religious belief put his long hair in a bun or tuck it in his shirt violated the Texas Religious Freedom and Restoration Act.”
-Reporter Taylor Nye contributed to this report.