The Ohio House passed: bipartisan bill that would do that prohibit discrimination against natural hair in primary and secondary schools by an 83-7 majority during Wednesday’s session.
State Reps. Juanita Brent, R-Cleveland, and Jamie Callender, R-Concord, introduced the CROWN Act last year, which stands for Creating a Respectful and Inclusive World for Natural Hair. The bill would also allow a person who claims that a public school discriminated against him or her on the basis of race-related characteristics to file a lawsuit in any court of competent jurisdiction.
“Hair discrimination is a fact of life,” Brent said Tuesday at a June 16 news conference. “I don’t think anyone should have to conform to Eurocentric values that dictate having straight hair. It’s stressful.”
She said people told her to straighten her hair, and she remembers one of her first assistants had an afro and people at the Statehouse told her to do something about it.
“I remember saying correctly, this is how his hair grows. That’s how it grows,” she said. “This is the world we live in – where people don’t feel seen and accepted.”
She argued that hair discrimination is one of the reasons people leave Ohio.
“How dare anyone tell you what to look like when it’s your natural state,” Brent said. “Here in Ohio, hair discrimination is alive and legal.”
Voting against the bill were Republican Reps. Gary Click, Rodney Creech, Al Cutrona, Bill Dean, Kevin Miller, Reggie Stoltzfus and Scott Wiggam.
Callender told a story that happened 25 years ago that ultimately led him to co-sponsor the bill. He said the mother told him how she prepared her daughter for her first day of kindergarten by putting braids and beads in her hair.
“Just an hour after classes started, the phone rang and she was told that her hairstyle was not in keeping with the dress code and that she was not allowed to attend her first day of kindergarten and was waiting in the office for her mother to choose to have her hair fixed,” Callender said. “Think about the impact this has on a child at school. … This is unacceptable. And this will ensure that this does not happen in the future.”
Rep. John Williams, R- Sylvania spoke in favor of the bill in the House.
“Students are required to go to school by law, so why should schools have the right to prohibit them from wearing their hair in a natural, culturally appropriate and healthy way?” he said. “Hairstyles are an extension of your race and ethnicity.”
This is the third time Brent has introduced this bill, but it has never made it out of committee before.
Ohio House of Representatives Bill 178 originally would have banned discrimination against natural hair in work and housing and would have made it unlawful to discriminate against someone’s hair texture and protective hairstyles such as braids, curls and twists under the Ohio Civil Rights Act.
However, an amendment to the bill in committee removed all of these elements from the bill, leaving only public K-12 schools.
“This bill was originally much more expansive than what we have for you today,” Callender said. “Passing a bill sometimes requires compromising on what we really want to see and what could very well be reintroduced next year.”
Columbus, Cleveland Heights, Akron and Cincinnati have already passed the CROWN Act at the local level. Across the country, 23 states have already passed this bill CROWN Act from last summer– reports the Society of Human Resources Management.
According to a CROWN Act 2021 study. 86% of these children reported experiencing hair discrimination by the age of 12.
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