The father of a seven-year-old girl whose hair was cut by a teacher without parental permission is suing the school district and two staff members for $1 million.
Jimmy Hoffmeyer’s lawsuit says that the constitutional rights of his mixed-race daughter have been violated. He has pulled his daughter out of the school.
An investigation by the school district concluded in July that while the teacher had broken school policy, she had not acted out of racial bias. She was reprimanded but allowed to keep her job.
Jimmy Hoffmeyer told the media last April that his daughter, Jurnee, had returned home from school one day with much of the hair on one side of her head cut. He said that a classmate on the school bus had used scissors to cut Jurnee’s long curly hair.
Two days later, she returned home from school with the hair on the other side of her head cut – despite the fact that she had been taken to a hair dresser who had given her an asymmetrical cut to make the different lengths less obvious.
Mr. Hoffmeyer said that he had first though that another child had done it when Jurnee told him it was the teacher. “The teacher cut her hair to even it out”, he said.
The lawsuit was filed in a federal court in west Michigan and the school and two staff members.
As well as violating the child’s constitutional rights, the lawsuit also alleges racial discrimination, ethnic intimidation, intentional infliction of emotional distress and assault and battery.
The district “failed to properly train, monitor, direct, discipline, and supervise their employees and knew or should have known that the employees would engage in the complained of behavior given the improper training, customs, procedures, and policies, and the lack of discipline that existed for employees,” the lawsuit says.
No formal response has yet been filed by the defendants and the school district has not yet made a public comment.
Sources: BBC
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