Booker
GALVESTON, Texas - A Texas school district has convinced a federal judge its grooming policy isn't actually sex discrimination, while the judge wonders if a dreadlocked student’s lawyer purposely fabricated her arguments to the contrary.
Galveston federal judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown on June 16 took the additional evidence introduced recently by Barbers Hill Independent School District and changed his mind on a prior summary judgment ruling, granting a motion to reconsider.
Student Darryl George's dreadlocks violated a hair-length policy for male students. His lawyer Allie Booker's response to Barbers Hill's motion was "alarming," after the ISD fact-checked claims in it.
"Most of George's citations provide no support whatsoever for his contentions," Brown wrote.
"His quotations and summaries of witness testimony are inaccurate to the point of fabrication. George cannot raise a fact issue by making up facts. The court will not tolerate it."
George was placed in in-school suspension in 2023 because his dreadlocks violate a policy that penalizes male students whose hair extends below the top of a shirt collar. Barbers Hill ISD says the requirement teaches the importance of grooming but it does not apply to female students.
George spent his entire junior year in in-school suspension and most of the claims in his lawsuit were rejected in an August opinion by Judge Brown that has since been appealed. Remaining was his claim for sex-based discrimination.
Also this August, he was placed in ISS to begin his senior year, leading him to transfer out of Barbers Hill High School. He cited mental health problems caused by that much time in ISS.
Judge Brown said new arguments by Barbers Hill show the grooming policy is important to prepare students for their eventual careers. Texas law even requires public schools to prepare students for college, work or the military.
One study showed that the 1,400 Texas high schools with grooming policies have lower disciplinary infractions and fewer dropouts.
"The policy prepares male students for a job they are statistically likelier to have and may be compelled to take," Brown wrote. "Moreover, it's legal for employers to differentiate based on sex in their dress codes."
Brown then picked apart the arguments made by George and his lawyer, Booker. Cases cited didn't apply to this one, he wrote, and Booker "has seemingly filed the entire discovery record as summary-judgment proof."
"That won't do," he wrote. "The nonmovant's burden is to point to specific evidence raising a genuine issue of fact. The court refuses to 'sift through' the thousands of pages George attaches to his response..."
Barbers Hill did, though. On May 21, it wrote Booker erroneously claimed the district changed its policy in 2023 to target him when in fact, the hair-length restriction was implement four years earlier.
Quotes from district officials were inaccurate, Barbers Hill said. It went so far as to file a six-page appendix identifying what it said were misstatements in Booker's response brief.
Judge Brown responded by telling Booker to respond to a show cause order to prove she shouldn't be penalized for her brief.
