Court Opinion

ID: 8890384
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 23:05:21.865985+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:07:10.750250
License: Public Domain

LEWIS, Chief Judge
(concurring in the result).
I concur in the result but do not consider the case to present the complexities that my Brother Barrett’s opinion would seem to indicate and thus find it unnecessary, and undesirable, to give approval to some of the views and statements contained in the main opinion.
The plaintiffs here attack the subject hair code as violative of their right to free speech, due process, and as discriminatory to their race and religion. In Freeman v. Flake, 10 Cir., 448 F.2d 258, we held that no substantial federal question was present, per se, in a school hair code such as the one here considered. Freeman is controlling and need not be re-examined to support affirmance. Plaintiffs, however, make the additional contention, not considered in Freeman, that this particular code is discriminative^ oriented as to race and religion. The record simply does not support these claims. More than two-thirds of the students affected by the code are white and the impact of the regulation is not unique to the Pawnee students. Nor is the code religiously oppressive to the Pawnee in a judicially recognizable manner. The Pawnee are near-pantheists, their every act having religious significance in their basic desire to live in harmony with the Universe. Hair styles, as the trial court correctly recognized, have traditional but variable significance to the Pawnee according to the trend of modern custom or a desire to renew or popularize the style of their forefathers. Their present contention of religious oppression rises no higher under *701this record than a desire to express pride in their heritage through wearing long braided hair. Their desire so to do is understandable but not a constitutionally protected right.