“When it first happened, I was very upset because I didn’t find out until after he got off the bus and he got into the car and said, ‘Look what they did to my head.” Angela Washington — the mother of 13-year old Julez Trice shares with ABC’s Houston station KTRK.
A Texas family filed a federal lawsuit against their son’s school district on Sunday, accusing it of discriminating against the young boy by drawing on his scalp with a permanent marker in an effort to bring his haircut up to code.
ABC News reports:
The lawsuit, which names the Pearland Independent School District and three staff members as defendants, claims school officials at Berry Miller Junior High in Pearland, Texas, laughed as they used a black Sharpie to fill in the line designs in seventh grader Juelz Trice’s hair without his consent.
In April, a staffer allegedly told Juelz, 13, that his haircut, which the suit described as a “common African American ‘fade’ haircut with innocuous line design,” violated the school’s dress code and sent him to the discipline clerk’s office.
That’s when he was allegedly told that he would be put in school suspension or the line design in his haircut would be immediately filled in with marker, according to the civil claim. The lawsuit said neither the principal nor the discipline clerk contacted the boy’s parents before taking action.
“The Berry Miler Junior High School officials laughed as they took many minutes to color the 13 year-old Juelz’s scalp which then took many days of scrubbing to come off.
Juelz was immensely humiliated and shamed,” Randall Kallinen, the family’s attorney, said in a statement. “The school officials did not phone Juelz Trice’s parents or hold any hearing as required by law.
Had they been phoned, Juelz’s parents would have shortened Juelz’s hair to get rid of the line design and he would have been back at school the same morning.”
Pearland ISD amended their dress code hairstyle policy in the wake of the incident, but the boy’s parents said that isn’t enough and accused the school of racial discrimination, according to the lawsuit.
After the incident, the involved staff did not receive training on Constitutional law regarding students, the Pearland dress code or racial sensitivity, the suit alleged.
The family said the school apologized but that doesn’t erase the trauma and embarrassment this young man had to endure. Haircuts such as the one Julez was rocking is part of our culture and he has absolutely every right to express himself through style.
Staff should have been given the necessary training to handle situations like this…but then again drawing on a student’s head with a permanent marker? Who does this?
