Barbers Hill Independent School District, in Mont Belvieu, Texas, has settled the lawsuit it fought for six years over Black students’ locs. The board voted Friday to approve the deal with De’Andre Arnold, his mother Sandy Arnold and his cousin Kaden Bradford.
The family sued in May 2020. According to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), which represented them with co-counsel, the district barred the students from classes, extracurricular activities and graduation unless they cut locs that honor their Black and Trinidadian heritage. The district’s code kept boys’ hair above the eyebrows, earlobes and shirt collar. The family argued that the rule singled out Black students with locs, in violation of equal protection and the First Amendment.
The two sides now describe the ending in different terms. LDF says the district agreed to a six-figure settlement. The district says it agreed to a “modest” payment from the Texas Association of School Boards’ risk management fund, not from local taxes, and the amount is undisclosed. Superintendent Greg Poole called it a win for the district: “This arrangement is absolutely a victory. All legal charges are dropped, our high expectations, as manifested by our dress code, remain unchanged, and not one single tax dollar will go toward any financial arrangement, regardless of how modest it is.”
The court record cuts against that reading. LDF says a federal judge barred the district from enforcing the policy against the students and preliminarily found intentional racial discrimination and constitutional violations. Last month, the court ruled the discrimination claims could go to trial. The settlement came before one.
LDF says the injunction changed practice well beyond Mont Belvieu. It says the ruling shaped guidance from the Texas Association of School Boards and the National Federation of State High School Associations, and that several districts rewrote dress codes to remove discriminatory language. Texas has since passed the CROWN Act, which bars discrimination over hair texture and protective styles.
Barbers Hill kept its code through the years that followed. Darryl George, a Black student at the same high school, spent months in in-school suspension beginning in 2023 over the length of his locs. A federal judge dismissed his suit in August 2025.
A district that pays to avoid a trial and then says nothing has changed has not answered the question the court was about to put to it. The CROWN Act is now the standard Barbers Hill’s dress code has to meet, and the next student told to cut or sit out will show whether it does.
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