Texas might join wave of CROWN Act states

The Texas House just passed the Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair (CROWN) Act, which would make discrimination based on certain hairstyles an unlawful employment practice. Read on.

What is the CROWN Act?

The proposed amendment—House Bill (HB) 567—to the Texas Labor Code would make it unlawful for an employer to discriminate “because of or on the basis of an employee’s hair texture or protective hairstyle commonly or historically associated with race.” Protective hairstyles include “braids, locs and twists.”

California and New York City recently enacted very similar laws, referred to as CROWN Acts. The Texas Senate will now take up the bill.

Why the bill?

Discriminating against an applicant or an employee because of hair styles is what I call “proxy discrimination.” Mostly these styles are worn by African Americans. So, employers could (and have) explained, “I am not refusing to hire or to promote because of race; rather, I am making the decision because of a chosen hairstyle that I don’t find professional.”

The argument goes that the hairstyles are mutable characteristics, and the employer shouldn’t be stuck with the choices made by an applicant or an employee. By the way, an Afro is an immutable characteristic because it is a genetic inheritance, and any employment decision based on it is automatically racial discrimination.

The CROWN Act closes this loophole in the law.

What should an employer do?