New York City brings in $250,000 fines for discrimination based on hair style

New York City is bringing in a ban on discriminating against anyone due to their hairstyle, in what is believed to be the first law of its kind in the United States.

Anyone who is found to have discriminated against someone at work, school or in a public place due to their hairstyle can be fined up to $250,000 by the city’s commission on human rights. Victims can claim unlimited damages.

The change in law, announced on Monday, applies to anyone in New York City but is designed to help black people.

The guidelines specifically mention the right of New Yorkers to maintain their “natural hair, treated or untreated hairstyles such as locs, cornrows, twists, braids, Bantu knots, fades, Afros, and/or the right to keep hair in an uncut or untrimmed state.”

“Bias against the curly textured hair of people of African descent is as old as this country and a form of race-based discrimination,” said Chirlane McCray, the wife of the mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, who is black.

The new policy is being brought in, in part, due to complaints from two workers in the Bronx, one from a worker at an Upper East Side hair salon, and a fourth from a restaurant employee in Queens.

The policy will not affect businesses requiring employees to wear hair nets or other health and safety measures as long as they apply to all employees, regardless of race.

“There’s nothing keeping us from calling out these policies prohibiting natural hair or hairstyles most closely associated with black people,” said Carmelyn Malalis, the commissioner and chairwoman of the New York City commission on human rights.

“They are based on racist standards of appearance,” she told The New York Times, adding that they perpetuate “racist stereotypes that say black hairstyles are unprofessional or improper.”

Georbina DaRosa, a 24-year-old social work intern, told the paper her braids sometimes elicited “microaggressions” from her superiors at work.

“Like, people say, ‘I wouldn’t be able to recognise you because you keep changing your hairstyle,’ that’s typical.”

Enie, 21, said that she had walked out of her job at the fast food restaurant Wendy’s after a manager asked her to cut off her 14-inch hair extensions.

“I quit because you can’t tell me my hair is too long, but the other females who are other races don’t have to cut their hair,” she said.

The US military, where 18 per cent of soldiers are black, has only recently abandoned its ban on hairstyles associated with black culture. The marines approved braid, twist and “lock” hairstyles in 2015, and the army lifted its ban on dreadlocks in 2017.

Chaumtoli Huq, an associate professor of labour and employment law at City University of New York School of Law, said that black politicians, like Stacey Abrams, who ran for governor of Georgia, and Ayanna Pressley, who represents Massachusetts in Congress, are helping make black hairstyles more acceptable.

“As more high-profile black women like Abrams and Pressley opt for natural hairstyles, twists, braids, we may see a positive cultural shift that would impact how courts view these guidelines that seek to prevent discrimination based on hair,” she said.