New York City Releases New Guidance on Discrimination Based on Hair

In February 2019, the New York City Commission on Human Rights released a legal enforcement guidance about race discrimination on the basis of hair.

According to the Commission, the New York City Human Rights Law (NYCHRL) “protects the rights of New Yorkers to maintain natural hair or hairstyles that are closely associated with their racial, ethnic, or cultural identities. For Black people, this includes the right to maintain 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.” The phrase “Black people” includes those who identify as:

• African;

• African American;

• Afro-Caribbean;

• Afro-Latin-x/a/o; or

• Otherwise having African or Black ancestry.

According to the guidance, hair-based discrimination implicates many areas of the NYCHRL, including prohibitions against race, religion, disability, age, or gender-based discrimination. The Commission’s guidance seeks to highlight the protections available under the NYCHRL for people who maintain particular hairstyles as part of a racial or ethnic identity, or as part of a cultural practice, regardless of the changing nature of these characteristics.

Covered entities with policies prohibiting hairstyles associated with a particular racial, ethnic, or cultural group would, with few exceptions, violate the NYCHRL’s protections against race and related forms of discrimination. Additionally, although the guidance focuses on Black communities, these protections broadly extend to other impacted groups including, but not limited to, those who identify as Latin-x/a/o, Indo-Caribbean, or Native American, and also face barriers in maintaining “natural hair” or specific cultural hairstyles.