The CROWN Act, which stands for “Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair,” went into effect in the city of Columbus on January 16, 2021. Columbus business owners should be aware of its requirements and update their policies as necessary to ensure compliance.

What is the CROWN Act?

The CROWN Act is a law that prohibits “race-based hair discrimination” in employment and education. Although Ohio has not passed a statewide version of the CROWN Act, Newburg Heights, Akron, Columbus, and Cincinnati have all passed the Act at the city level. Many other states and cities have also passed similar legislation across the country.

The CROWN Act updated the Columbus City Code to expand the meaning of “race” to include traits that are historically associated with race, such as hair textures and protective and cultural hairstyles, which consist of:

• Braids

• Locs

• Cornrows

• Bantu knots

• Afros

• Twists

The Act protects these hairstyles regardless of whether hair extensions, treatments, hair ornaments, beads, or head wraps are used.

What Changes Should Employers Make?

The first thing employers should do to comply with the CROWN Act is to conduct a thorough review of their employee appearance policies. Clearly, any explicit prohibition of the protected hairstyles must be removed. 

Employers should also take this opportunity to ensure that their appearance, dress, and grooming policies are racially neutral, both in the language and in the execution. These policies should focus on maintaining professional dress and cleanliness standards and ideally provide some level of flexibility. A policy that appears neutral on its face may still be discriminatory if it has a disproportionate affect, or “disparate impact,” on people of color, when executed as designed. 

Neutral policies can also result in discrimination when they are enforced unequally. Employers should take steps to ensure appearance policies are applied equally to employees of all races. Managers should receive training on how to enforce policies in a fair and consistent manner for all employees. Managers must also ensure appropriate and tactful communication when addressing dress code and professional appearance policies with employees. 

It is recommended that employers implement an annual discrimination and harassment training for managers and employees that includes the topic of implicit bias and provides guidance to prevent implicit biases from influencing policy enforcement and corrective action.  

Hair-based discrimination laws such as the CROWN Act are gaining traction across the country, but it’s important to remember that these laws essentially merely clarify that discrimination because of race prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and equivalent state laws includes race-based hair discrimination. Employers should review their policies and practices to ensure that they do not discriminate against any protected class group of individuals as drafted or in the execution.