A Michigan father has filed a $1 million lawsuit against a school district, a librarian and a teacher’s assistant after a teacher cut his 7-year-old biracial daughter’s hair without permission.
Jimmy Hoffmeyer argued in the lawsuit that his daughter’s constitutional rights were violated and she was affected by racial discrimination, ethnic intimidation, intentional infliction of emotional distress and assault and battery.
Hoffmeyer told the Associated Press that his daughter, Jurnee came home from Ganiard Elementary school in March with much of the hair on one side of her head cut. She said a classmate used scissors to cut her hair on a school bus.
Hoffmeyer complained to the school’s principal and even had Jurnee’s hair styled at a salon with an asymmetrical cut to make the differing lengths less obvious. Two days after the bus incident she arrived home with the hair on the other side cut.
“I asked what happened and said ‘I thought I told you no child should ever cut your hair,’” Hoffmeyer said at the time. “She said ‘but dad, it was the teacher.’ The teacher cut her hair to even it out.”
In July, the Mount Pleasant Public Schools (MPPS) Board of Education said in a statement that the staffer who cut Jurnee’s hair was reprimanded, “cutting a student’s hair on school grounds either with or without parent permission is a clear violation of school policy”. But, an independent third-party investigation “found no evidence that the incident was motivated by racial bias.”
“It’s clear from the third-party investigation and the district’s own internal investigation that MPPS employees had good intentions when performing the haircut,’ the district said.
However, Hoffmeyer said the school district never contacted him or his daughter as part of their investigation.
“They never questioned my daughter or me,” Hoffmeyer said. “Who did they talk to? Did they really do an investigation?”
Jurnee now attends another school.
