Global Courant
LANSING, Michigan — Denial of employment or educational opportunities due to discrimination based on natural and protective hairstyles, such as Afros, cornrows or dreadlocks, will be banned in Michigan under legislation signed into law Thursday by Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
The new law, known as the Crown Act, will amend the state’s civil rights law to ban discrimination based on hair texture and protective hairstyles in employment, housing, education and public accommodations.
State senator Sarah Anthony, who first introduced similar legislation in 2019, said at Thursday’s signing in Lansing that for years she has “heard the stories of men and women and children who are not given opportunities here in our state,” because of her discrimination.
“Let’s call it what it is: hair discrimination is nothing more than thinly disguised racial discrimination,” said Anthony, the first black woman to represent Lansing in the state senate.
While previous attempts to pass Michigan’s Crown Act failed in the Republican-led legislature, this year the legislation passed with bipartisan support with a 100-7 vote in the state House.
Michigan becomes the 23rd state to do one version of the Crown Actsaid the governor’s office. The The US House passed a bill to ban hair discrimination last year, but it failed to pass in the US Senate.
Proponents of the law have pointed to a 2019 Dove study that found one in five black women who work in offices or sales said they should change their natural hair. The study also found that black students are far more likely to be expelled for dress code or hair violations.
Marian Scott, a college student from Jackson, Michigan, joined lawmakers at the signing on Thursday. In 2019, Scott, then an 8-year-old, was told she was not allowed to take school photos because her red hair extensions violated school policy.
In 2021 she had a biracial 7 year old girl in Michigan hair cut by a school employee without her parents’ permission. The girl’s father, Jimmy Hoffmeyer, filed a $1 million lawsuit against the school district, alleging racial discrimination and ethnic harassment.
Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist II of Michigan, the state’s first black lieutenant governor, said his own daughter had her hair braided for the first time yesterday, with a heart motif in it.
“Imagine choosing how to present and someone tells you that’s wrong,” Gilchrist said. “What does that do to extinguish the imaginative potential of our young people?”
Michigan Democrats have focused on expanding the state’s civil rights law since taking power this year. The Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, drafted in 1976, was amended twice earlier this year to add protections for the LGBTQ community And workers undergoing abortions.
The Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, height, weight, family status, and marital status.
Former Republican Rep. Mel Larsen, who helped draft the civil rights bill in 1976 with Democratic Rep. Daisy Elliott, said earlier this year at a signing that the “original intent, and the intent still is, is that every citizen of Michigan has the right to be protected under the Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act.”
