The judge rejects the request of the black student who was punished by the hair

A US judge has rejected a black student in Texas who sought an injunction to protect him from being punished at his high school because of his hairstyle.

Officers stopped Darryl George, 19, in August last year, saying his dreadlocks violated the dress code.

Mr George asked District Judge Jeffrey Brown to issue a temporary restraining order so he could return to his school in Houston as part of a lawsuit he filed over suspension fees.

But in his ruling on Friday, Judge Brown dismissed the request, saying he had waited too long to seek the order.

Since the start of Mr George’s previous year at Barbers Hill High School, from August 2023, he has been given numerous disciplinary punishments for refusing to cut his hair.

The school district spoke about its dress code, saying hair cannot “be below the collar of a T-shirt, below the eyebrows, or below the ear holes when lowered”.

But Mr George refused to cut his braided dreadlocks, the family’s cultural significance in the black community.

He was pulled from class and suspended from school, and later had to go to an off-campus program.

“He has to sit in a chair for eight hours in a cubicle,” his mother told The Associated Press last year.

“I don’t like that. Every day he would come home and say that his back hurts because he has to sit in a chair.”

Mr George returned to the same school this year.

But Mr George’s lawyers said last month he was forced to deregister and transfer to another school because school officials suspended him from school on the first and second day of the new school year, which began in August.

The federal lawsuit brought by Mr. George and his mother will continue.

Mr George alleges his punishment breaches the Crown Act, the country’s latest law that prohibits hair discrimination. The law, which came into force in September 2023, prohibits employers and schools from punishing people for wearing braids or protective hair including dreadlocks.

In February, a federal judge ruled that his sentence did not violate the Crown Act.