ACLU in Texas

 Shelby Webb at The Houston Chronicle:

The Texas branch of the American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to hundreds of school districts on Wednesday, including 11 in the Houston region, asking them to change their dress code policies to allow young men to wear their hair long.

It comes on the heels of a Texas federal court decision striking down a dress code policy in Barbers Hill ISD that led to the in-school suspensions of two students who refused to cut their dreadlocks due to their family’s cultural practices. The case drew national attention after cousins Kaden Bradford and De’Andre Arnold were punished for wearing their natural hair in the 6,200-student district just east of Baytown.

Both Bradford and Arnold are Black, and Bradford’s ACLU attorneys argued that young white men who attended their high school were allowed to wear their hair longer than the dress code permitted but were not punished.

“While school districts throughout the county 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,” wrote Brian Klosterboer, an attorney for the ACLU of Texas. “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 School districts need to conform to federal law and fix outdated policies that cause serious harm to students in Texas.”