A Michigan dad has filed a $1 million lawsuit after an employee at his daughter’s school cut her hair without permission.
Jimmy Hoffmeyer is alleging racial discrimination, ethnic intimidation, and that his 7-year-old biracial daughter Jurnee’s constitutional rights were violated when a school employee cut her curly hair. As the father previously told USA Today, a white student initially cut his daughter’s hair, so he had to get it adjusted. After a few days, she came home with another side of her hair cut, this time by the white employee in question.
The suit names the school, a librarian, and a teacher’s assistant.
“The Defendants failed to properly train, monitor, direct, discipline, and supervise their employees, and knew or should have known that the employees would engage in the complained of behavior given the improper training, customs, procedures, and policies, and the lack of discipline that existed for employees,” the lawsuit reads, according to MLive.com.
Jurnee’s teacher was reportedly also aware of the haircut, as the school, Ganiard Elementary, previously shared in a statement that the girl “grew unhappy and dissatisfied with the way her hair looked after the other student cut it and asked a school library employee to help fix her hair during a classroom visit to the library.” Still, the school said the incident showed “a lack of judgement.”
“I just don’t understand why she thought that a child could make any decisions like that, whether it was straightening it, whether it was cutting it,” Hoffmeyer previously told FOX 2 Detroit in the above clip. “Why is she touching my child, period, during a COVID pandemic and without permission?”
The school said in July that a third-party investigation found librarian Kelly Mogg did not act with racial bias and was allowed to keep her job.
“We will aggressively defend against these baseless allegations in court and will not allow this to distract us from our mission to provide every child a world-class education that prepares them for college and careers,” read an via Associated Press-shared statement from Mount Pleasant Public Schools Board of Education president Amy Bond.
