On the first day of his senior year Daniel Hoosier was told he had to cut his shoulder length hair or he’d be yanked from class and place in on-campus suspension. He spent one day sitting on a small plastic stool in a chilly room, with others who’d violated Magnolia ISD’s grooming requirements—two other long-haired boys, a boy with a mustache and a girl with brightly dyed hair.
The room was soundless, Daniel was allowed two supervised bathroom breaks, and before he could get to his schoolwork, he had to write down the school district’s guidelines in full three times. The 17-year-old said he then “caved” and got his hair cut. “But I feel like I lost a piece of myself when I was forced to cut it.”
Three civil rights groups urged the Montgomery County district on Monday to end a grooming policy they say is discriminatory. A letter to the district from the ACLU of Texas and Lambda Legal highlights a policy that mandates that boys wear their hair short, but has no such requirement for girls. The groups say this rule “forces students to conform to gender stereotypes” and violates Title IX because the schools treat students differently based on their gender.
Parents told the Houston Chronicle they planned to gather en masse at the school board meeting Monday night to protest the policy.
The district did not enforce the hair-length rule during the last school year. It told families that COVID-19 safety was its focus. But in 2021-2022 Magnolia ISD has suspended multiple students for wearing long hair, according to Brian Klosterboer, attorney at the ACLU of Texas.
The attorney for the school district did not provide a comment.
Daniel, who attends Magnolia High School, said he liked having long hair as a style choice because it reflected his taste in music.
For other families the short-hair rule struck at the core of their identity. The impetus for the civil rights groups’ letter is a non-binary fifth grader named Tristan, who uses they and them pronouns. Tristan wears barrettes and scrunchies in their hair and hopes to become a marine biologist.
Tristan wore long hair for the past year without any problem. When Tristan’s mother, Danielle Miller, explained a school official had told her Tristan couldn’t attend regular classes without a mandatory haircut, the 11-year-old cried for most of an hour. No ponytails, no buns, the school said.
Tristan said, “This is how I identify. How can they tell me what I can do with my body?”
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Miller realized there was no way she and her ex-husband were going to push Tristan to get rid of the long hair.
Miller said the policy is painful and traumatizing to a kid who had won the citizen’s award and the principal’s award in prior years. Tristan thinks bullies would pick on them for wearing makeup and girl’s clothes, but hair is the one mode of expression the child brings with them to school.
“It is frustrating that Magnolia ISD has derailed Tristan’s start to the school year by trying to force them to cut their hair and suspending them,” Miller said.. “Wearing long hair is part of who they are and how they express their gender identity.”
Another parent, Ryan Waugh, was concerned about the public shaming aspect of the rule, saying that the principal and assistant principal at Bear Branch Junior High called out students during an assembly and classroom-by-classroom for violating the rule.
"The district and the administrators have now created an environment where the kids are shaming each other, bullying each other and not focusing on their education,” said Waugh. “Many of the students don’t want to be at school. It has become a terrible environment, as you can imagine.”
The district also specifies in its dress code that only girls can wear earrings. Earrings worn by boys will be confiscated and not returned, according to the policy handed out at one school.
A federal judge court ruled in favor of a family last year in Barbers Hill ISD in a preliminary injunction, finding the district’s hair-length rule was likely unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause.
The civil rights groups say the Equal Protection Clause prevents the government, and in this case the school district, from treating people differently based on gender without an "exceedingly persuasive justification." The ACLU of Texas has broached this subject with school districts across the state asking them to update their policies.
“It’s disheartening to see these discriminatory policies resulting in student suspensions and threats of discipline against families in the district,” said Klosterboer, the ACLU attorney. “We urge the school board to listen to parents and students who have been harmed by the district’s grooming code and take immediate action to stop punishing Tristan and other students for not conforming to gender stereotypes.”
Ricardo Martinez, chief executive officer of Equality Texas, which has partnered with the other organizations in this effort, said these policies fail to “respect the student’s inherent dignity and self-worth.”
Miller, Tristan’s mother said prior to the meeting her hope for her one allotted minute at the school board meeting was for district officials to see a very angry mom.
“They need to understand that their dress code is antiquated, sexist and homophobic,” she said. “And I’m just gonna call them right out on it.”
gabrielle.banks@chron.com
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