DRE ALL DAY

A federal appeals court in the United States ruled that an employer may legally refuse to hire a Black woman because of her locs. The reasoning: your race is protected, and your hairstyle is a choice. Guess the year. It is later than you think. 2016. Chastity Jones applied for a job at a call centre in Mobile, Alabama in 2010. The work was answering telephones. She was offered the job and she accepted it. Then a human resources manager raised her hair. She wore short locs. She was told the company did not allow them, and when she asked why, she was told — in words that ended up in a federal court record — that they tend to get messy. She declined to cut them. The offer was withdrawn the same day. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued on her behalf, arguing that locs are so bound up with Black identity that banning them is race discrimination. In 2016 the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against her. The reasoning is the thing to understand, because it is still law in part of the United States. The court held that the relevant statute protects immutable** characteristics — things you cannot change, like skin colour. A hairstyle, it said, is mutable. A choice. And an employer may discriminate on the basis of a choice. The Supreme Court declined to hear it in 2018. So the position became: your race is protected, and the way the hair grows out of your head is not, because you could always change it. That single ruling is why the CROWN Act exists. Every state law passed since has been an attempt to legislate around what that court said. Ten years ago. A woman applying to answer telephones.