# Karr v. Schmidt

> Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit · April 28, 1972 · 460 F.2d 609

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/8887985

## Case

- **Full name:** Chesley KARR, a minor, Individually and John R. Karr, Individually and as next friend and Guardian Ad Litem on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated v. Clifford SCHMIDT, Principal of Coronado High School, etc.
- **Court:** Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
- **Decided:** April 28, 1972
- **Citations:** 460 F.2d 609
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Roney
- **Judges:** Ainsworth, Bell, Brown, Clark, Coleman, Dyer, Gewin, Godbold, Goldberg, Ingraham, John, Morgan, Roney, Simpson, Thornberry, Wisdom
- **Cited by:** 104 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/8887985

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- stating that a high school student's “asserted right the impression that this case over the to be free of school regulations governing the length of his length of hair has created or is about hair is one that is not cognizable in federal courts”
- stating that the standard of review is whether the regulation is reasonably intended to accomplish a constitutionally permissible objective
- stating that a high school student’s “asserted right to be free of school regulations governing the length of his hair is one that is not cognizable in federal courts”
- stating courts should apply heightened scrutiny in “an action alleging discriminatory enforcement of a grooming code”

## Opinion text

RONEY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I dissent on a very narrow ground. I would hold that there is a Federal Constitutional question involved where students have virtually no choice as to what school they will attend for public education through the high school level, resulting as a practical matter in compulsion by the government, and where the school hair-length regulation follows them out of the schoolhouse door.
As other courts have had occasion to note, a student can indulge in most vagaries of dress and behavior during non-school hours and then abandon them at the schoolhouse steps, but he cannot grow and ungrow his hair. Breen v. Kahl, 419 F.2d 1034, 1038 (7th Cir. 1969); 1 Richards v. Thurston, 424 F.2d 1281, 1285 (1st Cir. 1970); 2 Westley v. Rossi, 305 F.Supp. 706, 713 (D.Minn. 1969); 3 Dunham v. Pulsifer, 312 F.Supp. 411, 419 (D.Vermont 1970). 4 Thus, a regulation requiring a student to shorten his hair effects a substantial intrusion, into his private life in a way that is important to him, where the *625 school board has no authority or reason to interfere.
It is precisely this kind of intrusion into the private lives of citizens which the Ninth Amendment was designed to protect against. Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 , 85 S.Ct. 1678 , 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965).
. “. . . it would be impossible to comply with the long hair regulation during school hours and follow the wishes of the students and their parents as to hair length outside of school . . . ”
. “. . . a school rule which forbids skirts shorter than a certain length while on school grounds would require less justification than one requiring hair to be cut, which affects the student twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, nine months a year.”
. ‘‘The rule here has effect beyond school, so were a school to prohibit a boy attending school with no shirt and bare to the waist, if he desires to go bare waisted in life at home or beyond the school he may take off the shirt as he leaves the school grounds. Such is not the case with hair . . . The hair restriction ... invades private life beyond the school jurisdiction.”
. “Garments can be changed at will whereas hair, once it is cut, has to remain constant for substantial periods of time.”

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/8887985. Public record. Not legal advice.