Bias Suit Targets Hair Care Rules

SAN DIEGO — A group of African American hair care specialists filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Tuesday to overturn state cosmetology licensing laws that they say discriminate against stylists providing traditional African hairstyles and keep them from earning a living.

“When you stifle the entrepreneurial urge in any community, you’re doing violence to that community,” said JoAnne Cornwell, a professor of Africana studies at San Diego State University and one of the plaintiffs in the suit.

At issue is a state requirement that hairstylists specializing in braiding techniques, which are increasingly popular among African American women, must meet the same standards as other stylists: 1,600 hours of cosmetology training and passage of a licensing exam.

The rub is that braiding is neither included in the state-approved curriculum for cosmetology schools nor tested in the licensing exam, according to court documents. Braiding includes a number of methods of twisting, weaving and interlocking the hair without the use of chemicals such as shampoos, rinses and gels.

Braiding is the stylistic and cultural antithesis of “processing” or straightening African American hair, and plaintiffs see the state regulations as suppressing an expression of their African heritage.

But a spokeswoman for the Department of Consumer Affairs, which oversees the Board of Barbering and Cosmetology, noted that state regulators are guided by a sweeping state law that requires a license for anyone “dressing, curling, waving . . . shampooing . . . relaxing, singeing . . . beautifying or otherwise treating by any means the hair of any person.”

A bill to amend state law and create a license especially for hair braiding was submitted last session by then-Assemblywoman Marguerite Archie-Hudson (D-Los Angeles). The bill was later withdrawn.

The lawsuit asserts that requiring aspiring hairstylists who want to do braiding to go to beauty school is both nonsensical because the skills they need are not being taught in such schools and too expensive because many women cannot afford beauty school tuition, which can be as much as $7,000.

The result, the plaintiffs said, is that many self-taught braiding hairstylists--some African Americans, some recent immigrants--work in clandestine shops, always fearful of being fined or arrested.

Plaintiffs assert that the regulations and the state-approved cosmetology curriculum are relics of “Jim Crow” laws and presume that the only thing to be done with African American hair is to use chemicals to straighten it to be like Caucasian hair.

“I’m here in the name of every woman who ever walked into a beauty salon and was turned away or laughed at or told her hair has to be ‘fixed,’ ” said Cornwell, who has devised a braiding style called “sisterlocks” but is blocked from opening a shop because she lacks a cosmetology license.

“The cosmetology regulations perpetuate a negative self-image for women with naturally textured hair,” said Cornwell, adding that African American hair is considered “bad” because it is not naturally straight.

The lawsuit does not appear to be popular among braiding stylists with state licenses.

Zena, who holds a state cosmetology license and does braiding at the One of a Kind salon in South-Central Los Angeles, said that allowing unlicensed stylists to do braiding would be unfair to licensed practitioners. She said that most stylists who do braiding also do permanents and curling, skills that are included on the licensing exam.

Another licensed cosmetologist who does braiding in Los Angeles, and asked not to be identified, said that even though beauty schools do not teach braiding, they include instruction in skin and health matters, such as detecting body lice, that are important to all hairstylists. She said that allowing unlicensed braiding specialists could undercut the wages of license holders.

“It [the lawsuit] is a threat to those of us who are licensed and went through the normal channels,” she said.

The lawsuit, asking that the state be blocked from enforcing licensing requirements on braiding specialists, was filed by a Washington-based Libertarian law firm, the Institute for Justice, with free assistance from lawyers in the San Diego office of Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro, one of the nation’s most prestigious law firms.

The Institute for Justice, founded in 1991, specializes in fighting laws that it believes place undue restrictions on businesses, particularly start-up enterprises. It has successfully challenged taxicab rules in Denver and cosmetology licensing in Washington and soon will file suit in New York against restrictions on jitney commuting vans.

The institute decided to target cosmetology laws after a study funded by the family of Irwin Jacobs, founder of QualComm, a San Diego telecommunications firm, cited those laws as a hindrance to low-income women trying to start their own businesses.

One of the plaintiffs is Ali Rasheed, who owns the Braiderie salons in San Diego and Oceanside, which specialize in hair braiding. The state Board of Barbering and Cosmetology has fined Rasheed for employing a hair weaver, an African immigrant, who does not have a state cosmetology license.

“To be penalized by someone who has no idea what we do and who is only trying to protect their industry is un-American,” Rasheed said. “It’s un-American, and we’re going to fight it.”

Rasheed said his customers get more than a hairstyling; they get a lesson in displaying pride in their heritage.

“We don’t fix hair, we change personalities,” Rasheed said. “They walk out like African queens.”

Also among the plaintiffs is Taalib-Din Uqdah, executive director of the Washington-based American Hairdressers and Natural Hair Assn., a veteran of a similar fight in the nation’s capital. In that case, the city decided to exempt hair braiders from regulation.