Barber v. Colorado Independent School Dist., 94-0054

• Decision Date: 22 June 1995
• Docket Number: No. 94-0054,94-0054
• Citation: 901 S.W.2d 447
• Parties: , 101 Ed. Law Rep. 1241, 38 Tex. Sup. Ct. J. 902 Austin David BARBER et al., Petitioners, v. COLORADO INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, Respondent.
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

Page 447

901 S.W.2d 447 64 USLW 2043, 101 Ed. Law Rep. 1241,
38 Tex. Sup. Ct. J. 902 Austin David BARBER et al., Petitioners,
v.
COLORADO INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, Respondent. No. 94-0054. Supreme Court of Texas. Argued Nov. 16, 1994.
Decided June 22, 1995.

Pat Barber, Colorado City, James C. Harrington, Austin, for petitioners.

T.L. Rees, C. Michael Ratliff, Colorado City, for respondent.

GONZALEZ, Justice delivered the opinion of the Court, in which PHILLIPS, Chief Justice, and HIGHTOWER, HECHT, CORNYN, ENOCH and OWEN, Justices, join.

This is a class action challenging the legality under the state constitution of hair length and earrings restrictions imposed by Colorado Independent School District (CISD) upon its male high school students. The trial court held that CISD's grooming code violated the Texas Constitution and granted a permanent injunction against the school district, prohibiting enforcement of the regulations. The court of appeals reversed the judgment of the trial court, holding that judicial intervention was inappropriate in this case. 864 S.W.2d 806. We refuse to use the Texas Constitution to micro-manage Texas high schools. Therefore, we affirm the judgment of the court of appeals.

In 1992, Austin Barber was an eighteen-year-old high school senior in Colorado City, Texas. CISD's school rules included the following regulation:

Page 448

The District's dress code is established to teach grooming and hygiene, instill discipline, prevent disruption, avoid safety hazards, and teach respect for authority.

Boys may wear hair to the bottom of the collar, the bottom of the ear and combed out of the eyes. Boys may not wear earrings of any kind. Caps and hats not a part of women's formal attire may not be worn in the building. Sudden, unbecoming fashions or anything designed to attract undue attention to the individual or activities are not acceptable. These guidelines are subject to administrative discretion. Extra-curricular organizations may impose a more stringent dress code.

(Emphasis added.) Barber and his family had a contrary view about whether he was required to observe CISD's grooming policy. They notified the school board that Barber had reached the age of majority and requested that CISD suspend enforcement of the grooming regulation as to him and other students aged eighteen and over. They stated that the regulation's restrictions for males regarding hair length and earrings violated Barber's fundamental constitutional rights because the policy did not apply to female students. They concluded that if CISD did not exempt Barber and other adult males from the regulation, they were going to sue. By a 4-to-2 vote, the CISD board members refused to suspend enforcement of the regulation.

Consequently, with the assistance of his father, an attorney, Barber brought a class action against CISD to enjoin its enforcement of the regulation. Barber challenged the constitutionality of CISD's dress code regulation as it pertains to adult male students. Over CISD's objections, the trial court certified the class as all male students attending CISD schools who were eighteen years of age at the time of suit and in the future. Over CISD's objections, the trial court designated Barber the class representative. The case was tried to the court without the benefit of a jury. A summary of the evidence presented at trial follows.

O'Henry Young testified that he has been an attorney for thirty years and has served as a member of the Abilene Independent School Board for many years. He compared Abilene ISD grooming and dress codes to CISD's and stated that Abilene ISD chose to "get out of the hair business," in part because the school board was unsure whether it could legally regulate this area. He did not think that CISD's regulation served a useful purpose.

Gary Paterson, the principal of Snyder High School, testified that Snyder ISD did not have a specific rule regarding hair length for the general student population. (It did have a rule that boys could not wear earrings.) For boys in sports, Snyder ISD gave coaches the authority to set standards about the hair length of boys on their teams. Snyder ISD also regulated skirt lengths for girls. Paterson testified that if a boy showed up in school in a dress, he would be presumed disruptive and be asked to change his attire. He did not think that it would be wise to have a different standard for students merely because they were eighteen years old.

Joe Marlett, principal of Sweetwater High School, testified that his school board did not regulate boys' hair length but distinguished between the sexes as to earrings. Boys could wear a stud but not dangling earrings; girls could wear dangling earrings. As to the disparity of rules between the different school districts, Marlett testified that "local policy would govern what is best for their particular school district" and that each school district's regulations represent the societal values of a particular locale. He added that what may be appropriate and in good taste in one district may not be in another.

Raymond Hollis, the superintendent of schools at Westbrook ISD, testified that although his schools' grooming rules do not mention hair length, none of the boys in his schools had hair longer than their collars. Westbrook ISD's grooming rules require that girls' skirts not be shorter than the top of the knee. Hollis indicated that arbitrary rules for hair length and earrings were an important teaching device, which would instill discipline in students by teaching them that there are consequences for not following rules.

Page 449

James McSwain, the high school principal of CISD, testified about the grooming code in question and about the consequences when a student did not follow the rules. In the high school, about twenty-five or thirty male students had been asked to cut their hair, and only two were suspended from school. McSwain testified that the grooming regulation was the result of "a collaborative effort between community and faculty and students." Ultimately the seven-person school board formulated the policies. McSwain opined that there was a compelling reason for the grooming rules, stating that:

[A] student must comply substantially with the rules of an institution. School has to have rules, obviously, to carry out its business. I think that is part of our responsibility to educate kids. I think it is an educational tool to teach compliance with rules, and that is an integral part of society and is a part of our responsibility to teach students that they must comply with rules even if they don't agree with the rule.

McSwain added that Barber was in a "home-bound" program due to knee surgery, and that he attended classes at school part of the time, but that most of his school work was done at home.

Barber testified that he cut his hair to appear in a community theater play; that he has never served in-school suspension time due to the length of his hair; that because school administrators threatened him twice with in-school suspension because of the length of his hair, he got it cut; and that he had served in-school suspension time twice during his sophomore year (once for leaving school without signing out and once for being tardy four times to his first period class). Barber testified that he brought the lawsuit for the following reasons:

Because I don't feel that four members of a School Board should be able to dictate to an adult student matters of hairstyle, which to me is an expression of individualism and personal freedom. I would like to be free from sexual discrimination.

He also questioned the utility of the hair length and earrings restrictions for males, particularly since they did not apply equally to females. Barber concluded that he wanted to decide for himself the length of his hair and whether and when to wear an earring.

Dwayne Harris, a farmer and member of the CISD school board, testified that the district's grooming regulation corresponds to community values.

Pat Barber, the plaintiff's father who represented his son in this lawsuit, and another attorney testified as to attorney fees.

The foregoing testimony was the sum total of Barber's case.

The defendant, CISD, elicited the testimony of Dr. Edwin Headrick, a professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University. The professor testified...