FortBendNow.com

Six months after a federal judge ruled they violated the constitutional rights of a kindergarten student for not letting him wear his hair according to his Native American religious beliefs, Needville Independent School District officials have appealed the ruling before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In a recently filed appeal brief, Needville ISD’s attorney said the judge’s ruling “hijacked” the district’s authority to “regulate its population.”

The decision by the district marks the latest move in a nearly year-long dispute pitting the district and its strict student dress code against a 5-year-old boy who wishes to wear his hair long as an expression of his American Indian heritage.

The dispute began last summer, when Kenney Arocha and Michelle Betenbaugh informed Needville ISD officials of their plans to move from Stafford and have their son, Adriel Arocha, attend kindergarten in the district.

Made aware of the couple’s and the boy’s views on the practice by some Native American men of wearing their hair long, school officials told Adriel’s parents he would have to cut his hair according to terms in Needville ISD’s dress code.

“If they want to say it’s a freedom of religion issue – what religion are you?” Needville ISD Superintendent Curtis Rhodes said at the time. “If you’re a Muslim and you have those religious tenets, that’s a known… But you have to have a sincerely held religious belief.”

Adriel’s parents appealed to the school board to overturn the Needville ISD administration’s decision not to let the boy wear his hair long.

At an Aug. 20 appeal hearing before the board, Rhodes announced a recommendation that either the board deny the boy an exemption or require him to “wear his hair in a tightly woven single braid down his back with the hair behind his ears, out of his eyes and the braid tucked into the collar of his shirt.”

The board voted to adopt that exemption.

But the exemption soon became a “degrading and embarrassing” punishment, according to a federal lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union filed against Needville ISD on behalf of Adriel and his parents.

Since the sixth day of the 2008-2009 school year, Needville Elementary School officials began placing Adriel in in-school suspension for coming to school with his hair tied in two braids worn outside his shirt.

“Upon arriving at his classroom every morning, Adriel is escorted away from his classmates and into another room where he sits with his ISS teacher for the rest of the school day,” the suit states.

“Adriel endures this segregation for over seven hours every day with no opportunity to engage in group learning or social play with other children during class or on the playground,” the suit states, adding that the Texas Education Code says ISS can extend for no longer than three days.

Kenney Arocha and Michelle Betenbaugh, sought a temporary restraining order and an injunction to prevent school officials “from disciplining Adriel Arocha in any way that violates his rights to free exercise of religion or free expression,” which in Adriel Arocha’s case means being allowed to attend school with his hair kept in two long braids, worn outside of his clothing.

In January, U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison ruled in favor of Adriel and his parents, permanently barring Needville ISD from forcing the boy to comply with terms of the dress-code exemption they created for Adriel.

That policy “violates not only Adriel Arocha’s free exercise rights, but also his rights to free expression and his parents’ due process rights,” Judge Ellison said in his ruling.

The dispute between Adriel’s parents and Rhodes and other district officials stemmed in part from the superintendent’s apparent belief that Kenney Arocha has worn his hair long for more than a decade because of “personal choice” rather than religious conviction, Judge Eillison wrote in his ruling, noting that Rhodes had testified the family was unable to provide him “with written evidence of their beliefs, a religion that could be researched or a tribal affiliation.”

“Plaintiff Arocha is only required to show that he himself has these ‘deeply held religious beliefs,’ which he has done,” Judge Ellison said in the ruling. “He describes his hair as ‘an outward extension of who we are and where we come from, our ancestry and where we’re going in life.’ He taught Adriel Arocha that his hair demonstrates ‘how long he has been here’ and ‘is an extension of who (Adriel) is.’”

But in a brief for Needville ISD before the 5th Circuit Court, Austin attorney Roger D. Hepworth argues that the district court “explicitly recognized that this is not really a Native American hair length case; it is a choice of hairstyle case.”

According to Hebworth’s brief, Needville ISD officials didn’t dispute that Adriel and his parents “have a sincerely held religious belief that A.A.’s hair remain uncut… However, NISD was never, prior to this lawsuit, presented with any support or even the proposition that Plaintiffs have a sincerely held religious belief that A.A.’s hair be worn onlin in two braids in plain view. NISD disputes the sincerity of this belief, given its dubious timing, lack of objective support, and because of strong evidence of contrary actions by Plaintiffs prior to the filing of this lawsuit.”

In its appeal, the district argues among other things that Judge Ellision erred in ruling the application of the Needville ISD’s grooming code violated Adriel’s freedom of religious exercise and freedom of speech.

In its conclusion, the brief states, “Texas law is clear that the dtermination of educational policies are state matters that should be handled at the local level when not otherwise specified. In substituting its own judgment as to what constitutes the best way of achieving educational objectives for that of the locally elected school board, the district court essentially hijacked NISD’s legislatively afforded powers and duties thereby squelching its ability to regulate its population.”