Step 1: Facts of the case This is a case in which the plaintiffs are three long haired young men who were denied the ability to enroll in Tyler Junior College due solely to their hair length violating the schools dress code. One of the plaintiffs is a Vietnam War veteran who had attended the school for a semester the previous year and had caused no difficulties in that time. The school stated that long haired students had been known to cause disruptions in the classroom. It was due to this that the rule regarding hair length was implemented into the schools dress code. Step 2: Question of law presented to the court The legal dispute taking place here is a dissension between the applicability of the Tenth and the Fourteenth Amendments in the case of hair length regulations. The Fourteenth Amendment provides citizens with equal protection from the law in the case of state ordinances. The Tenth Amendment which provides the public official the freedom to operate the school under his jurisdiction in the way he deems premier, free from federal involvement. Step 3: Decision and reasoning by the judge …show more content…
The plaintiffs were deemed to have the right to question the reasonableness because they are considered people by the constitution because they are of age,and thus are provided the prerogative to demand the rights guaranteed to all people by the constitution. Those affected by these guidelines are the sole reason the rationality is being questioned. If it were another facet of society being discriminated against other than allegedly disruptive students, the absurdity of these rules would be evident. The rights of students regarding their right to choose their hairstyle freely had been upheld in previous cases. The only times the courts sided with the those imposing the rule were those in which they were able to show a sound correlation between hair length and health, behavior, and, or