France wants to be the first country to have national legislation to ban hair discrimination

The authors of the text hope the initiative sends a message of support to black people and others who complain of facing hostility in the workplace (and beyond) because of their hair.

But this unprecedented measure still faces a long road ahead, now heading to the Senate (upper house), where it is likely to face opposition.

Although only 50 of the 577 deputies of the National Assembly were present for the vote, support for the bill was overwhelming with 44 votes in favor.

The bill is based on similar legislation that exists in more than 20 states in the United States, having been proposed by Olivier Serva, a French deputy from the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe.

The proposal aims to amend existing anti-discrimination measures in the labor code and the penal code to explicitly prohibit discrimination against people with curly and frizzy hair or hairstyles considered unprofessional, as well as bald people.

Although it is not intended to eliminate discrimination based on race, this was the main motivation for the legislative proposal.

“People who do not fit into Eurocentric standards face discrimination, stereotypes and prejudices,” said Olivier Serva, quoted by the Associated Press (AP) news agency.

Left-wing parties and members of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Renaissance party supported the bill, which was enough to take it to the National Assembly.

However, the Senate is dominated by conservatives so the proposal will likely face opposition from right-wing and far-right deputies who see it as an effort to import US concepts about race and racial discrimination to France.

In the United States, 24 states have adopted a version of the CROWN Act, which prohibits hair discrimination in employment, housing, schools and the military.

A federal law relating to this issue was approved in the House of Representatives (lower house of the US Congress) in 2022, but Senate Republicans blocked it a month later.

Opponents of the French bill say the French legal framework already offers sufficient protection to people who face discrimination because of their natural hair, whether afro-style, cornrowed or colored, but the bill’s authors disagree.

As an example, defenders of the text cite the case of a black French flight attendant who sued Air France for not letting him fly because of his braids and for being coerced into wearing a wig with straight hair.

Flight attendant Aboubakar Traoré won the case in 2022 after a decade-long legal battle, but the court ruled that he was not discriminated against because of his hair, but because he was a man, since women were allowed to wear braids.

France does not collect official data on race, because it follows a universalist vision that does not differentiate citizens by ethnic groups, which makes it difficult to measure hair discrimination based on race.