ACLU sues Old Redford Academy for suspending boy with long hair
Detroit school says student doesn't follow dress code
October 3, 2007
The Michigan ACLU has hauled a Detroit charter school into court for suspending a 14-year-old student who hasn’t had a haircut in 10 years because of his mother’s religious convictions.
Officials at Old Redford Academy on Detroit’s west side say Claudius Benson II — who wears his hair pulled back in an Afro puff — doesn’t comply with the school’s dress code, which requires “close-cropped” hair.
But his mother, Alecha Benson of Detroit, says she follows messianic Jewish traditions and adheres to Old Testament passages that she interprets as prohibiting the cutting of her son’s hair.
“We don’t feel that we have to change our belief systems for my son to get an education,” she said at an ACLU news conference Wednesday. “We have a right to chose to continue in the school that I enrolled him in.… He’s anxious to go back to school.”
The ACLU filed suit in Wayne County Circuit Court on Tuesday, alleging that the school is infringing on her son’s constitutionally protected right to religious expression.
The head of the school and its lawyer didn’t return calls seeking comment.
Late Wednesday, a school representative notified the ACLU that it was having the case transferred to U.S. District Court in Detroit. A circuit court hearing that had been set for today was canceled. A federal court hearing hasn’t been scheduled.
ACLU lawyer Mark Fancher wants a judge to order the school to grant Claudius a religious accommodation similar to an exemption a Jewish student might receive to wear a yarmulke in a school that prohibits students from wearing hats. He also wants school officials to remove the suspension from the boy’s school record.
“The school has placed Claudius Benson in the position of making a choice between violating sincerely held religious beliefs and being denied an education,” Fancher said at the news conference, adding that the school is violating the state and federal constitutions and Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act.
Claudius enrolled in the ninth grade at the academy Sept. 4.
On Sept. 6, a school security guard took him to the school administrator, who suspended him pending a meeting of the school’s board of directors Sept. 11.
Alecha Benson told board members that she couldn’t cut her son’s hair because she abides by Old Testament law, including Leviticus 19:27, which says in the King James Version: “Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.”
Despite a follow-up meeting Sept. 26 with Melvin Smith, chief executive of Innovative Teaching Solutions, which runs the school, Benson said school officials wouldn’t let her son return.
He has studied at home ever since, with homework assignments provided by Smith.
Benson, who described herself as a “contemporary African-American Hebrew,” said her son is a B and C student who attended Cadillac Middle School in Detroit last year. She said she picked Old Redford because of its reputation. An older daughter also attends the school.
The suit names the school, Innovative Teaching Solutions and Smith.
In April, Wayne County Circuit Judge Susan Borman ordered Old Redford to reinstate fifth-grader Rodell Jefferson III, a 10-year-old honor student, following his expulsion for hair that was 3/4-inch long. Borman also told the school to expunge Rodell’s disciplinary record.
