See my second edit. I agree, but put yourself in a judge’s shoes. They spend a large amount of time focusing on narrow definitions of words. While I disagree with it, I think that a judge interpreting hairstyle to purely mean style and not restrict length is valid. I don’t think the judicial system failed here. The legislature should have written a better law with explicit language on length, color, extension, embellishment, etc. “Hairstyle” is vague and can be interpreted in all sorts of ways.
No, there’s only one way to interpret hairstyle. Every hairstyle includes a defined length of hair. Name any hairstyle, and length is a component part of the definition. There is no honest interpretation of the word hairstyle that does not include length. Only someone with a prejudicial agenda would argue otherwise.
Every linguist worth their salt completely disagrees with you. Language is a matter of individual experience, it works over our overlaps of personal understandings, and those personal understandings are never perfectly aligned (common understandings of words even drift all the time because of this!). You can call slapping an adjective to a category its own new category, and that’s fine, but different people have a different understanding of the concept. There is no “objective” definition or even an “objective” experience of any kind, it just isn’t possible, that’s not how human brains do things.
A concept like “oxygen” or even “water” might have a significantly more generally overlapping understanding from a large amount of people. Our common education, upbringings, and interactions with other speakers make a lot of English speakers agree on that. But a concept like “hairstyle” is something that requires a lot of nuance, because different people have wildly different interpretations of what’s included or counted as its own “hairstyle”. Many hairstyles you see as different might be seen to others as one singular hairstyle, or something you see as one hairstyle might be seen to others as different ones. Different people may think very differently at how color, length, texture, shape, accessories, etc. make up hairstyles. Many people even think of head/face shape and bodily features as part of a hairstyle (especially in certain religious contexts). Just because you have a certain understanding of it, and your logic makes sense to you, does not mean it is the “correct” understanding.
The idea of “there’s no subjective definition” is extremely prescriptivist and is a spit in the face of modern language/psychology/sociology science. It’s unfortunate that this kind of BS is propogated throughout our education system by “English Language Arts” teachers… and is why people genuinely think that AAVE is “bad English” and why people who don’t know shit about language constantly have stupid long-winded arguments about how “actually this common/standard usage or pronunciation of a word is wrong”, thinking they can enforce certain usages on other people because they can speak a version of the language.
That being said, I think for that exact reason it’s absurd that there’s even an attempted legal argument about length not being part of hairstyle. What somebody constitutes as a hairstyle is unique to them and the cultures they’re a part of, and it’s completely unreasonable to dictate that something they and their peers consider a hairstyle isn’t a hairstyle, then punish them for it. It is literally their head hair. Same thing with facial hair and body hair. They can do whatever the hell they want with it.
Totally agreed on all points, and this is really what I was trying to get across. I cannot stress enough that I despise dress codes and think they have been used to suppress cultural expression for their history.
We’re just talking about law here, which means linguistic analysis and the ability to distinguish between agreeable viewpoints and valid ones is critical if we want to have our positions enshrined and defended. There is a disagreeable, but valid, interpretation of the word hairstyle that distinguishes length as a separate factor. This judge didn’t try to interpret the word “protected” as “yellow”, because that’s absurdly invalid. Judges are our society’s foremost experts at taking disagreeable, but valid, interpretations and blowing them wide open.
Lawmakers have to be prepared for malicious judicial review. It is certain to happen at some level, particularly when the Supreme Court makeup is as it stands. Don’t leave an obvious gap in the verbiage for a shitty justice to exploit, and then this kid would have been in school for the last year instead of dealing with this nightmare.
Not sure I totally agree. For instance, a mullet is a style, but there are many lengths a “mullet” can be. So, the argument is that the law is forbidding the restriction of mullets, but not the length of said mullet.
For what it’s worth, I agree with your interpretation. I have no qualifications to be a judge, but I would also include length in the definition of hairstyle. But, this is a system of laws and playing devil’s advocate, the legislature left a loophole that can be exploited. Regardless, your OP is incorrect in saying that length is explicitly protected. It’s implicitly protected, but that is subject to judicial interpretation of definitions. They should amend the law to be more clear rather than relying on a favorable judicial reading.
Bullshit. A mullet has short hair in the front and long hair in the back. There’s no version of a mullet hairstyle that does not define the length of the hair. There are variations of mullets, but each hairstyle variation defines a length.
The judge is a racist piece of shit who has no business on the bench.
Right, but you can have a short mullet or a long mullet. Short dreads or longer dreads. There is a factor of length separate from style. As much as you want it not to be, interpretation is complex. This judge could absolutely be a racist piece of shit, and likely is, given that he’s a republican judge. But the fault here lies at the feet of the legislature who wrote an inadequate law.
I actually have a person in the same room as me right now who is a hairdresser, and they do see both arguments. I’m not asking for you to agree with the judge (and I have to stress again that I do not and would include length in style) but there is a valid view of that word here. But honestly, I’m not that keen to argue about it. If you still think it’s not a matter up for debate, let’s just agree to disagree and move forward aligned with the idea that this kid should be able to wear his hair however tf he wants.
Right, your hairstyle can be short dreads or long dreads, or a short mullet or a long mullet. That’s four different hairstyles. This judge is absolutely a racist piece of shit. The legislators who wrote the law testified in court that of course hairstyle includes length, because that’s obviously what a hairstyle is. There is no ambiguity or rokm for interpretation. These are all objective facts.
Alright cool, let me rebut with the following: yes it can, and yes it did. You’re looking at it, right now. Racist piece of shit or no, he’s got power and he just used it to take advantage of an ambiguity to get this result. So argue all you want, that’s an objective fact. The lawmakers can be pissed off all they want, but this is on them. They should have done what has always been asked and required of good law, which is being explicit and clear.
And frankly, it’s really fucking stupid to argue that definitions of words, especially in a legal context, are objective anyway. Words and definitions are exceptionally subjective, which is why we even have a judicial system to interpret the law. Yall can be pissed at me all you like, but the fact of the matter is, here we are talking about this because it was taken advantage of on a technicality, that should have been considered in advance and covered.
There’s no ambiguity. There is no subjective definition. No hairstyles exist that do not include a length. The length of your hair is part of the hairstyle. It is stupid to argue, on that we agree.
You cannot have a mullet with long hair in the front and shorter hair in the back, because that’s not the hair lengths of a mullet. You cannot have a mohawk with long hair on the sides and shorter on top. You cannot have a long, curly crew cut. You cannot have pigtails with a completely shaved head.
Hairstyles always, inexorably require hair length definitions. Anything else is a disingenuous argument, an attempt at semantic skulduggery. It is a lie to say that hairstyles don’t include length.
There is no technicality, there is no advantage, there is only racism and injustice. This judge is a fraud, the school superintendent is a fascist bigot, and this ruling is a crime against humanity.
Some hairstyles have a range of lengths as a factor, but others do not. A crew cut cannot be long, but even your other examples have obvious counter arguments. Pigtails cannot be shaved length, but can be very short or long enough to drag on the floor. Dreads can be very short, or as long as down to your hips if you get really carried away with it. Now for me, I’m all for it, you do you. But it’s a valid argument that this law is forbidding restrictions to whether pigtails are allowed, but not to the range of lengths of said pigtails. Now just replace “pigtails” with “locs” and here we are. Now, if the school forbid all male hairstyles longer than X inches and your cultural hairstyle of choice has a minimum length of X inches as an inbuilt requirement to achieve said style, that would be a different case and likely to succeed on the CROWN Act alone.
End of the day though, we’ve just been arguing semantics over the word “hairstyle” all day. I’m happy to just agree to disagree on this. I think we’re even aligned on the principle that students should be free to choose their own hairstyle.
I think the “focusing on narrow definitions of words” is the part that makes this bullshit. Any judge can interpret as widely or as narrowly as they want. They do it all the time. They just pander to one side of the divide when that’s the ruling they want to get to.
See my second edit. I agree, but put yourself in a judge’s shoes. They spend a large amount of time focusing on narrow definitions of words. While I disagree with it, I think that a judge interpreting hairstyle to purely mean style and not restrict length is valid. I don’t think the judicial system failed here. The legislature should have written a better law with explicit language on length, color, extension, embellishment, etc. “Hairstyle” is vague and can be interpreted in all sorts of ways.
No, there’s only one way to interpret hairstyle. Every hairstyle includes a defined length of hair. Name any hairstyle, and length is a component part of the definition. There is no honest interpretation of the word hairstyle that does not include length. Only someone with a prejudicial agenda would argue otherwise.
Every linguist worth their salt completely disagrees with you. Language is a matter of individual experience, it works over our overlaps of personal understandings, and those personal understandings are never perfectly aligned (common understandings of words even drift all the time because of this!). You can call slapping an adjective to a category its own new category, and that’s fine, but different people have a different understanding of the concept. There is no “objective” definition or even an “objective” experience of any kind, it just isn’t possible, that’s not how human brains do things.
A concept like “oxygen” or even “water” might have a significantly more generally overlapping understanding from a large amount of people. Our common education, upbringings, and interactions with other speakers make a lot of English speakers agree on that. But a concept like “hairstyle” is something that requires a lot of nuance, because different people have wildly different interpretations of what’s included or counted as its own “hairstyle”. Many hairstyles you see as different might be seen to others as one singular hairstyle, or something you see as one hairstyle might be seen to others as different ones. Different people may think very differently at how color, length, texture, shape, accessories, etc. make up hairstyles. Many people even think of head/face shape and bodily features as part of a hairstyle (especially in certain religious contexts). Just because you have a certain understanding of it, and your logic makes sense to you, does not mean it is the “correct” understanding.
The idea of “there’s no subjective definition” is extremely prescriptivist and is a spit in the face of modern language/psychology/sociology science. It’s unfortunate that this kind of BS is propogated throughout our education system by “English Language Arts” teachers… and is why people genuinely think that AAVE is “bad English” and why people who don’t know shit about language constantly have stupid long-winded arguments about how “actually this common/standard usage or pronunciation of a word is wrong”, thinking they can enforce certain usages on other people because they can speak a version of the language.
That being said, I think for that exact reason it’s absurd that there’s even an attempted legal argument about length not being part of hairstyle. What somebody constitutes as a hairstyle is unique to them and the cultures they’re a part of, and it’s completely unreasonable to dictate that something they and their peers consider a hairstyle isn’t a hairstyle, then punish them for it. It is literally their head hair. Same thing with facial hair and body hair. They can do whatever the hell they want with it.
Totally agreed on all points, and this is really what I was trying to get across. I cannot stress enough that I despise dress codes and think they have been used to suppress cultural expression for their history.
We’re just talking about law here, which means linguistic analysis and the ability to distinguish between agreeable viewpoints and valid ones is critical if we want to have our positions enshrined and defended. There is a disagreeable, but valid, interpretation of the word hairstyle that distinguishes length as a separate factor. This judge didn’t try to interpret the word “protected” as “yellow”, because that’s absurdly invalid. Judges are our society’s foremost experts at taking disagreeable, but valid, interpretations and blowing them wide open.
Lawmakers have to be prepared for malicious judicial review. It is certain to happen at some level, particularly when the Supreme Court makeup is as it stands. Don’t leave an obvious gap in the verbiage for a shitty justice to exploit, and then this kid would have been in school for the last year instead of dealing with this nightmare.
Not sure I totally agree. For instance, a mullet is a style, but there are many lengths a “mullet” can be. So, the argument is that the law is forbidding the restriction of mullets, but not the length of said mullet.
For what it’s worth, I agree with your interpretation. I have no qualifications to be a judge, but I would also include length in the definition of hairstyle. But, this is a system of laws and playing devil’s advocate, the legislature left a loophole that can be exploited. Regardless, your OP is incorrect in saying that length is explicitly protected. It’s implicitly protected, but that is subject to judicial interpretation of definitions. They should amend the law to be more clear rather than relying on a favorable judicial reading.
Bullshit. A mullet has short hair in the front and long hair in the back. There’s no version of a mullet hairstyle that does not define the length of the hair. There are variations of mullets, but each hairstyle variation defines a length.
The judge is a racist piece of shit who has no business on the bench.
Right, but you can have a short mullet or a long mullet. Short dreads or longer dreads. There is a factor of length separate from style. As much as you want it not to be, interpretation is complex. This judge could absolutely be a racist piece of shit, and likely is, given that he’s a republican judge. But the fault here lies at the feet of the legislature who wrote an inadequate law.
I actually have a person in the same room as me right now who is a hairdresser, and they do see both arguments. I’m not asking for you to agree with the judge (and I have to stress again that I do not and would include length in style) but there is a valid view of that word here. But honestly, I’m not that keen to argue about it. If you still think it’s not a matter up for debate, let’s just agree to disagree and move forward aligned with the idea that this kid should be able to wear his hair however tf he wants.
Right, your hairstyle can be short dreads or long dreads, or a short mullet or a long mullet. That’s four different hairstyles. This judge is absolutely a racist piece of shit. The legislators who wrote the law testified in court that of course hairstyle includes length, because that’s obviously what a hairstyle is. There is no ambiguity or rokm for interpretation. These are all objective facts.
Alright cool, let me rebut with the following: yes it can, and yes it did. You’re looking at it, right now. Racist piece of shit or no, he’s got power and he just used it to take advantage of an ambiguity to get this result. So argue all you want, that’s an objective fact. The lawmakers can be pissed off all they want, but this is on them. They should have done what has always been asked and required of good law, which is being explicit and clear.
And frankly, it’s really fucking stupid to argue that definitions of words, especially in a legal context, are objective anyway. Words and definitions are exceptionally subjective, which is why we even have a judicial system to interpret the law. Yall can be pissed at me all you like, but the fact of the matter is, here we are talking about this because it was taken advantage of on a technicality, that should have been considered in advance and covered.
There’s no ambiguity. There is no subjective definition. No hairstyles exist that do not include a length. The length of your hair is part of the hairstyle. It is stupid to argue, on that we agree.
You cannot have a mullet with long hair in the front and shorter hair in the back, because that’s not the hair lengths of a mullet. You cannot have a mohawk with long hair on the sides and shorter on top. You cannot have a long, curly crew cut. You cannot have pigtails with a completely shaved head.
Hairstyles always, inexorably require hair length definitions. Anything else is a disingenuous argument, an attempt at semantic skulduggery. It is a lie to say that hairstyles don’t include length.
There is no technicality, there is no advantage, there is only racism and injustice. This judge is a fraud, the school superintendent is a fascist bigot, and this ruling is a crime against humanity.
Some hairstyles have a range of lengths as a factor, but others do not. A crew cut cannot be long, but even your other examples have obvious counter arguments. Pigtails cannot be shaved length, but can be very short or long enough to drag on the floor. Dreads can be very short, or as long as down to your hips if you get really carried away with it. Now for me, I’m all for it, you do you. But it’s a valid argument that this law is forbidding restrictions to whether pigtails are allowed, but not to the range of lengths of said pigtails. Now just replace “pigtails” with “locs” and here we are. Now, if the school forbid all male hairstyles longer than X inches and your cultural hairstyle of choice has a minimum length of X inches as an inbuilt requirement to achieve said style, that would be a different case and likely to succeed on the CROWN Act alone.
End of the day though, we’ve just been arguing semantics over the word “hairstyle” all day. I’m happy to just agree to disagree on this. I think we’re even aligned on the principle that students should be free to choose their own hairstyle.
I think the “focusing on narrow definitions of words” is the part that makes this bullshit. Any judge can interpret as widely or as narrowly as they want. They do it all the time. They just pander to one side of the divide when that’s the ruling they want to get to.
I see absolutely no reason to give that fascist piece of shit judge any devil’s advocacy, benefit of the doubt, or similar rhetorical leniency.
Fascists take liberals’ and leftists’ inclinations towards fairness and weaponize it against us. We need to quit giving them the opportunity.