“They discriminate in two ways,” said Caro Achar, engagement coordinator at the ACLU of Texas. “One, in the language of the dress code rule, and then, two, in the application of it.”
Teams of ACLU staff and University of Texas School of Law students analyzed K–12 dress codes from 1,178 school districts across the state.
Dress codes in 622 districts, 52.8% of the sample population, used gender-based dress and grooming requirements that pertain only to boys or only to girls. Examples include prohibiting male students from wearing makeup, nail polish or earrings, and rules against “spaghetti straps” on girls.
Codes in 13.2% of districts prohibit or restrict religious symbols on jewelry and clothes, including rosary beads, and 83.5% of districts prohibit head coverings. Only 21.1% of all districts explicitly note exceptions to the dress code based on religion. The Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act requires schools to allow exceptions in their dress codes for religious clothing.
In 79.4% of districts, clothing that is worn, has holes or does not fit properly is restricted.
Dress codes in 26% of districts contain rules on hair length that apply only to boys, such as “Boys’ hair will not extend below the eyebrows, below the ear lobes, or below the top of a T-shirt collar.”
“I think that a lot of people are so surprised that these rules are still on the books, that these rules are still being applied, that they affect so many different aspects of students and the ways that they show up in school, along lines of gender or race or religion or income,” Achar said.
Prohibitions on long hair for boys date to the 1960s, when schools attempted to combat the counterculture movement and the shaggy-hair look popularized by the Beatles.
Rules against boys’ long hair are still being applied. In 2019, a Hico ISD teacher cut a student’s hair during school without his parents’ permission. In 2021, Monahans-Wickett-Pyote ISD in West Texas refused to allow two indigenous students to wear long hair unless they could prove their native ancestry.
International Leadership of Texas (ILTexas), a free public charter school system with campuses in DFW, Houston and College Station, updated its code of conduct this school year to impose harsher penalties on hair infractions, adding “repeated hair violations” to a list of Level III offenses, which include buying and selling drugs or alcohol, harassment and robbery.
A student from ILTexas, who asked to remain anonymous, said his long hair has created problems for him throughout his high-school career.
“It makes me feel more limited than my peers who are girls,” the student said. “They get to express whatever they want. If they want a shaved head, they can have a shaved head.”
The disciplinary measures for Level III offenses include up to five days of out-of-school suspension and “Discretionary Recommendation for Expulsion.”
“It is slowing down class,” the student said. “Teachers taking the time out to be like, ‘All right, boys, let me see the backs of your neck. Make sure it’s not touching your collar.’” The student’s mom says the hair policy has interfered with her son’s education.
“I think that a lot of people are so surprised that these rules are still on the books, that these rules are still being applied." – Caro Achar, ACLU of Texas
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Eddie Conger, founder and superintendent of ILTexas, says the dress code rules help with both student safety and preparing students for the workplace. “My desire is that the kid is prepared the best that they can be to code-switch in dress to be able to meet the culture of whatever that organization is that they're trying to get a job or position at.
“I don’t care if the boys have hair all the way down to the hip,” Conger continued, “but when they walk in, it’s going to be in a man-bun, or a samurai bun. It’s going to be off the shoulders.”
The ILTexas website displays a Title IX non-discrimination statement that states, in part, “this institution is prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex (including gender identity and sexual orientation).” The anonymous student says the school is not complying with that statement by keeping different standards for boys’ and girls’ hair.
“In our charter system, where boys can apply to be a part of this school of choice, the boys will be in a male uniform. Females will be in a female uniform,” Conger said.
The ACLU study says rules requiring short hair on boys or discouraging conventionally feminine characteristics send a message that boys “must live up to the stereotypical notions of gender imposed by their school district.”
Girls make up 61.8% of dress code violations, despite representing 48.8% of the Texas school population. In 2018, a high school in Flower Mound apologized after showing a video to students about its dress code that presented only female students being reprimanded.
Some rules that do not mention girls by name tend to disproportionately affect girls, such as rules requiring “modest attire,” or prohibitions on clothes that are “too tight” or “cause distractions.”
The study recommends removing subjective language from dress codes.
“When we leave things up to individuals and don't have a set of guidelines that every person has to follow in a very similar way, we allow room for both human error and also human malpractice,” said Achar.
The study also recommends removing language that discriminates based on race. In 7.39% of school districts there are rules restricting students from wearing “racially significant hairstyles and textures,” including braids, twists, Afros, cornrows, dreadlocks and extensions.
It is important to note that these findings came before statewide implementation of the CROWN Act, which stands for Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair. The act, which took effect on Sept. 1, 2023, states that schools “may not discriminate against a hair texture or protective hairstyle commonly or historically associated with race.”
Barbers Hill ISD, outside Houston, is in a legal dispute about the CROWN Act and its application to a student, Darryl George, who was suspended because of his long locks.
In a Houston Chronicle advertisement, Superintendent Greg Poole, who holds a doctorate in educational leadership, said that “being an American requires conformity with the positive benefit of unity” and that the district was not in violation of the CROWN Act. Poole did not respond to the Observer’s interview request.
In 2020, the ACLU sent a letter to 477 school districts, urging them to change their boys-only hair rules. Since then, 242 of those districts have removed these policies.
“We’ve found that change is possible,” Achar said. “I think that that’s the thing that most people are responding to. That, OK, this is jarring and a little frightening, and also it's fixable.”
Consequences of dress code violations frequently involve missing class time. Detention or timeout make up 28.5% of disciplinary actions, and in-school suspension occurs in 13.6% of cases. Out-of-school suspension results in 0.7% of cases.
“I was completely stripped of the end of our first semester of senior year, and that changed everything for me.” – Trevor Wilkinson, former Texas high school student
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That is what happened to Trevor Wilkinson, who was suspended from Clyde High School, outside Abilene, in 2020 for painting his nails, a practice that was allowed for girls.
“I was completely stripped of the end of our first semester of senior year, and that changed everything for me,” Wilkinson said.
Four years later, as a senior at Texas Tech, he is not surprised that gender-based dress codes are still being used.
“To get a gender-neutral dress code for my school district, I not only had to have two of the largest civil rights law firms in the country back me up, but I also had to get 400,000 signatures for my high school to even try to listen to me,” he said.
A 2022 Government Accountability Office report cited the “detrimental effects of removing students from the classroom for dress code violations” as a nationwide equity concern.
Surprisingly, changing or modifying students’ clothes represents just 3.1% of dress code action taken.
Achar says removing students from class “is the opposite of what would help preserve a student's learning environment and their ability to successfully absorb the material.”
The ACLU’s report disagrees with arguments that strict dress codes appropriately maintain order in schools. Achar says that while some dress code stipulations make sense at face value, when you dig deeper you will find rules that do not contribute to students’ learning.
“If you want to defend a dress code that insists that students should cover their belly buttons and their thighs, for both boys and girls, then I dare you to find a dress code that has that language and doesn't have a specific rule on how only boys can't wear nail polish, or how students can't have head coverings without any religious exceptions, or how sagging pants are banned, but so are torn clothes or clothes with patches, which are oftentimes rooted in just wearing something secondhand, not wearing something that is inherently inappropriate,” Achar said.
“I think the thing that the report is finding is that even where some of the rules around what students should be wearing feel appropriate, a lot of them, on a lot of different points of identity and points of analysis, are discriminatory.”
