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Here's a court case to watch. It will determine whether religious schools are subject to California's Unruh Act, which prohibits businesses from discriminating against a number of categories, including people with long hair. This is the only law I now know of that extends discrimination protection to longhairs on a statewide basis:
SF Chronicle article about California Supreme Court case
Hi Bill,
that case is very interesting. However, not knowing much about the US legal system, I wonder whether the law won't see a difference between sexual orientation and hair style preference. These days, there is broad agreement that sexual orientation per se is not a free choice.
Or does the Unruh act quote both sexual orientation and hairstyle preference / personal appearance? I understand that the "Unruh Act" equivalent in DC forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation and on personal choices regarding the appearance - but DC hasn't reached statehood yet...
Transferring the aspect of "hard-wiredness" from sexual orientation to hair style preferences, we'd need to argue that some of us are born long-hairs, i.e. we do not really have a choice, but we need to grow our hair if we are to be happy with ourselves. Would this argument hold any water in legal proceedings? Maybe the case will show that. - If nonparochial schools of similar quality are available nearby, the legal situation of the two girls might be even more difficult.
In Germany, a Christian hospital lost their case in labor courts in the 1980's, when they wanted to fire a young male nursing student for openly being in love with another man. And talking about the hair issue, even the German armed forces ultimately lost in the courts when they tried to force a young male long-haired draftee to wear his hair short during his term of required service...
In any case, happy growth to everybody!
Hans-Uwe
The California Supreme Court has recognized, in the interpretation of the Unruh Act, that one's characteristics that form part of one's identity also matter, not merely "what is not a choice". Although "it's a choice" has been argued for years about both sexual orientation and hair length, the argument is really not logically sustainable, because religion is a choice and it is almost always among the list of protected characteristics!
I wasn't aware of the DC law, and I'm somewhat surprised it exists under the nose of Congress. Washington can be a pretty dressy and formal place at times.
Champaign, Illinois, a college town with lots of youthful voters, did pass such a law in the 1970s, but the statewide court system overrode it when all the large corporations which employed students in Champaign complained. I vaguely recall Santa Cruz, California, also took some steps to outlaw such discrimination. It is a rather left-wing, hippie, college town. The usual tack in overriding city laws is to say the state has, by passing SOME civil rights laws, pre-empted local power to legislate in the area.
The Unruh Act's interpretation has been that state-owned schools are "business establishments" and thus fall under the act. The religious school will have an uphill battle to prove they are not such. They are arguing that they are a private organization and thus able to exclude who they want, as was ruled by a case involving the Boy Scouts. The Unruh Act has been ruled to apply to a country club (golf club) and somewhere between a large business-like operation like a golf club and boys going hiking they have been drawing the line.
The U.S. military still discriminates against gay people as well as longhairs, and it will likely be the last group to lift such restrictions. There's a mentality here that you lose most rights when you go into the military.
Bill
The DC Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on "hair style" with an exception for a "class of employees for a reasonable business purpose", whatever that may mean. I'm not aware of any case law on point, although I haven't really looked.
OTOH, I don't see any way they could interpret males as a "class of employees" when the same statute also prohibits sex discrimination (along with the longest laundry list of protected classes I have ever seen!).
Rather, I think it probably means that employees in a particular job, such as say food service, might be required to put their hair up or wear a hair net without violating the law, which protects hair styles per se, so without the exception it would otherwise be illegal to require someone even to wear a ponytail.
And guess what? I am now working for a law firm in DC.
I seem to recall angst ridden posts at one time by someone in law school about whether to cut their hair. The answer seems to be to apply for a job on K street!
Hi elektros,
I'll be sure to let any aspiring longhair in law know about your "K Street precedent", that's phantastic! The closest I have seen here in Germany was a pretty good lawyer with a bad case of MPB, but nevertheless, he grew his semicircle of hair way over his ears, and I thought it looked really cool. This guy is very successful in court, too. - Do you have to do court sessions and deal eg with juries?
Best wishes!
Hans-Uwe
Actually, I'm one block away from K street, but it is true that most of the law firms in DC are in that area.
In the 'common law' system a precedent is a court decision that affects future interpretation of the statutes, whereas that isn't supposed to happen in 'civil law' countries like Germany. OTOH, using the word precedent outside of it's legal meaning, the DC law could be said to set a precedent for other jurisdictions to follow. It's probably the most comprehensive civil rights law anywhere, or failing that, at least lists the largest number of different grounds for a civil rights case!
I am a patent agent (Patentanwalt to you) and not an attorney (Rechtsanwalt). I don't have any right of appearance before a court, except for the Board of Appeals at the patent office, which has a panel of judges and no jury, and so far I've never appeared even there. Many appeals are decided on the briefs, with oral hearings being the exception, and appeals can drag on for years, while the term of the patent gradually runs down.
The only other face-to-face proceedings in this line of work are 'personal interviews' with the examiners, and these take place either in the examiner's office (which can get crowded) or occasionally in a conference room. Sometimes the examiner's supervisor will be present, sometimes the patent agent or attorney will bring one of the partners from their firm, sometimes the inventor(s) will be there, and theoretically I suppose you could bring an expert. In fact, you can bring who you like, but the examiner may have to hunt for extra chairs or a bigger room! These usually only last 15-20 minutes, rarely as much as an hour. Owner/inventors sometimes like to go, but I've never had corporate employees interested in going to a personal interview.
I said Germany and I think you might be Austrian?
Hi elektros,
I'm German, but there is a guy posting as "Austrian Long Hair" from time to time. The legal systems are similar in Germany and Austria. You must know quite a bit of German if you know some of the more specialized terms.
And indeed, I did use the term "precedent" very loosely. Interestingly, even in countries like Germany, rulings of higher courts (eg the constitutional court and federal courts) have a strong effect on the lower courts, and parties quote not only laws and statutes, but also such precedents in their arguments. Usually, it is very difficult for lower courts to go against such a precedent (Präzedenzfall).
Have a good Sunday evening, a good July 4 holiday, and a good week.
Hans-Uwe
I spreche Deutsch ein bisschen, aber ich glaube das du sprechst Englisch besser!
In countries that follow the common law system we get the impression that civil law countries don't follow precedent, but apparently it's not so. It would hard to reinterpret the statutes every time a new case is heard. (You see, I can't even express this properly in German, so I have to go back to English)
There is a point to the military's stance on hair. The underlying psychology is that by shaving the heads of inductees, you are stripping them of their individuality and establishing a hierarchy, making it easier to mold them into compliant team players.
There are practical and tactical advantages as well - I'm sure the most well known would be controlling lice infestation.
Things being as they are, I'm surprised the German draftee won.
-m
