The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sent a letter to a Kansas elementary school on Friday demanding that it rescind a policy forbidding boys from wearing long hair after an 8-year-old Native American student was reportedly forced to cut his hair or be sent home.
The boy involved in the incident at R.V. Haderlein Elementary School in Girard, Kansas is a member of the Wyandotte Nation. He grew out his hair last summer after attending his nation’s Gathering of the Little Turtles and seeing other Native men wearing their hair long, according to the letter.
However, this reportedly violated the school’s “Boy’s Hair Length,'' which states that for boys hair cannot touch the collar of a crew neck t-shirt, cover their eyebrows, or hang past their earlobe. Ponytails are also not allowed.
As a result, the ACLU says, the boy was told in August that he would need to cut his hair, or be sent home until he does. The policy does not apply to female students at the school.
The ACLU emphasized that the policy violates multiple civil rights laws, such as the Kansas Preservation of Religious Freedom Act, the U.S. Constitution, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“Requiring him to cut his hair to attend school imposes substantial burden on his faith practice because, in and of itself, it violates his religious beliefs,” the letter states.
The ACLU also stressed that the policy promotes “rigid view of gender norms and roles,” and is also unlawful because “schools may not impose different requirements on students based on their sex without an exceedingly persuasive justification.”
There are only three cities in Kansas that have passed the CROWN (Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair) Act, which prohibits discrimination race-based hair discrimination in the workplace and schools, according to KSN News. The city of Girard, where the school is located, is not one of them.
Ending Hair-Based Discrimination With The CROWN Act
The boy’s mother did visit the school in early September, according to the letter, and requested an exemption and even volunteered to provide documentation to prove the boy’s Native heritage. However, she was told there were no exemptions, and after numerous failed attempts to contact the superintendent, the mother was forced to have her child’s hair cut so he would be allowed to keep attending school.
The letter highlighted that the policy is troubling, especially with the history of Native American boarding schools in the U.S. The boarding schools would strip Indigenous children of their identities in many ways, including by cutting their hair.
“Because the Boy’s Hair Length Policy is facially unlawful, we also urge you to reevaluate and rescind the policy in its entirety,” the ACLU wrote. “In the meantime, we urge you to immediately grant an accommodation allowing him to wear his hair below his shoulders in accordance with his cultural and religious traditions.”
The ACLU has given the school district until Dec. 1 to respond to its requests.
