Queens Catholic School Told Third-Grader, 'No Braids': Lawsuit

JAMAICA ESTATES, QUEENS — A Queens mom is suing a Catholic school for racial discrimination after the principal allegedly told her eight-year-old son he couldn't wear cornrows to class, court records show.

Lavona Batts, the boy's mother, is suing the Immaculate Conception Catholic Academy in Jamaica Estates over its policy prohibiting "braids of any kind," according to the complaint filed Monday in Queens Supreme Court.

She says her son, Jediah, showed up for his first day of third grade on Sept. 4 with his hair in braids, according to the complaint. When Jediah's grandmother went to pick him up, the principal allegedly rubbed the boy's head and told her, "We don't accept this."

The principal added that the family had five days to change Jediah's hairstyle, the complaint says. Instead, the family decided to enroll him in another school.

Jediah "loves his hair," his mother told the New York Daily News: "He feels like it makes him look good, it’s a part of him."

Now Batts is suing to get the school to recoup her $275 registration fee and the $250 she spent on school uniforms, plus compensatory and punitive damages, according to the Daily News, which first reported on the lawsuit.

Her $300,000 lawsuit comes just three months after New York passed a state law explicitly barring discrimination based on natural hair or hairstyles "historically associated with race," the law says.

The school's student handbook says boys must keep their hair "neat and trim, no longer than the top of the shirt collar" and prohibits Mohawks, ponytails, braids, buns and hair color, the Daily News reported.

The Immaculate Conception Catholic Academy referred questions about the lawsuit to the Diocese of Brooklyn, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.