Judge denies request from black student punished over hair

A US judge has denied a request from a black student in Texas who had asked for a court order to protect him from punishment at his secondary school over his hair style.

Officials suspended Darryl George, 19, last August, saying his dreadlocks violated the dress code.

Mr George asked district Judge Jeffrey Brown to issue a temporary restraining order so he could return to his Houston-area school as a federal lawsuit he filed over the suspension proceeds.

But in his ruling in Friday, Judge Brown denied the request, saying he had waited too long to ask for the order.

Since the start of Mr George’s previous year at Barbers Hill High School, beginning in August 2023, he has been handed several disciplinary penalties for refusing to cut his hair.

The school district referred to its dress code, which says hair cannot be “below the top of a T-shirt collar, below the eyebrows, or below the ear lobes when let down”.

But Mr George refused to cut his braided dreadlocks, with the family citing its cultural significance in the black community.

He was removed from class and placed on in-school suspension, and later required to attend an off-campus programme.

“He has to sit on a stool for eight hours in a cubicle,” his mother told the Associated Press news agency last year.

“That’s very uncomfortable. Every day he’d come home, he’d say his back hurts because he has to sit on a stool.”

Mr George returned to the same school this year.

But lawyers for Mr George said last month he had been forced to unenroll and transfer to another school because school officials had placed him on in-school suspension on the first and second day of the new school year, which began in August.

A federal lawsuit brought by Mr George and his mother will continue.

Mr George has alleged his punishment violates the Crown Act, a recent state law prohibiting race-based discrimination of hair. The law, which took effect in September 2023, bars employers and schools from penalising people because of hair texture or protective hairstyles including dreadlocks.

In February, a state judge ruled that his punishment did not violate the Crown Act.