The rule always sounds neutral in the handbook. Hair must be neat. Professional. Appropriate for a customer-facing role. Then a supervisor decides that locs are none of those things, and a woman who showed up ready to work goes home unpaid to do something about her head. She loses the shift. Sometimes she loses the job. The write-up says grooming policy, because nobody puts the other word in writing anymore.
Minnesota answered that in 2023, and not with a hair statute. It answered with a definition.
The legislature amended a dictionary, not a dress code
Minnesota Statutes § 363A.03 is the definitions section of the Human Rights Act, running to subdivision 50 and defining terms like "employer" (subd. 16), "place of public accommodation" (subd. 34), and "local commission" (subd. 23). Subdivision 36a, added in 2023, reads in full:
"Race" is inclusive of traits associated with race, including but not limited to hair texture and hair styles such as braids, locs, and twists.
Twenty-four words. The act that added them, 2023 Minn. Laws ch. 3 (H.F. No. 37), describes itself in its own title as "adding a definition of race to the Minnesota Human Rights Act; amending Minnesota Statutes 2022, section 363A.03, by adding a subdivision." It was presented to the governor and signed on January 31, 2023, at 7:51 p.m. It carried no effective-date clause, which means the default in Minn. Stat. § 645.02 governed: every non-appropriation act "takes effect on August 1 next following its final enactment." So the operative date is August 1, 2023 — not the day of the signing ceremony.
Inside the definition is a different place to stand
A trait sitting outside the definition of a protected class is an inference you have to build. You argue that the grooming rule is a stand-in for race, that the employer knew it, and that the neutral words are cover.
A trait sitting inside the definition is not an inference. It is the text. The word "race" is not confined to one section of the Human Rights Act — it runs through the operative provisions of the entire chapter. It appears in § 363A.08, subdivision 2, which makes it an unfair employment practice for an employer, "[e]xcept when based on a bona fide occupational qualification," to discharge an employee or to discriminate in "hiring, tenure, compensation, terms, upgrading, conditions, facilities, or privileges of employment" because of race. It appears in § 363A.11, subdivision 1, on the "full and equal enjoyment" of a place of public accommodation. It appears in § 363A.13 on educational institutions, which is where a school dress code lives. It appears in the housing and public-services provisions the Act's own statement of public policy enumerates at § 363A.02, subdivision 1. Amend the definition once and every one of those provisions moves at the same instant, without the legislature touching any of them.
Compare how Texas did the same job. Its CROWN Act, effective September 1, 2023, added separate new sections to the Education Code, the Labor Code, and the Property Code — a code-by-code patch, each one reaching only what it reaches. Minnesota amended the noun and let the noun travel. And the Act instructs courts which direction to lean: § 363A.04 says its provisions "shall be construed liberally for the accomplishment of the purposes thereof."
Where the claim goes, and what it carries
A Minnesotan has three doors.
Under § 363A.28, subdivision 1, an aggrieved person may file a verified charge with the Commissioner of Human Rights — the Department is at 540 Fairview Avenue North in Saint Paul — or bring a civil action directly in district court under § 363A.33. Under § 363A.07, subdivision 3, the charge may instead go to a local human rights commission, but filing with one agency forecloses filing the same charge with the other. Whichever route, the clock is one year from the occurrence of the practice, § 363A.28, subdivision 3(a). Someone who files with the Department and then wants out can sue after 45 days if the Department has not held a hearing, or has not entered a conciliation agreement the charging party signed — the statute is disjunctive, so either one opens the door — on notice to the commissioner and within 90 days of that notice, § 363A.33, subdivision 1(3).
In district court, § 363A.33 gives either side a jury trial as of right, requires a civil penalty paid to the state, and directs the court, where it finds an unfair discriminatory practice, to order compensatory damages to the aggrieved party "in an amount up to three times the actual damages sustained." The court may add punitive damages under § 549.20, and attorney's fees are in its discretion. It authorizes hiring, reinstatement, upgrading, back pay, and "any other relief the court deems just and equitable." Before an administrative law judge, § 363A.29, subdivision 4, runs the same treble-compensatory structure with punitive damages capped at $25,000. A shift lost to a hair policy and a claim under this chapter are not the same size.
What a definition cannot do
A definition does not win a case. Someone still has to prove that the policy was applied because of the trait, and § 363A.08 preserves the bona fide occupational qualification defense. The neutral-policy route is harder still: § 363A.28, subdivision 10, requires the complaining party to show "a statistically significant adverse impact on a particular class of persons protected by section 363A.08, subdivision 2," and one worker sent home rarely has a statistic. The Act's own public-policy section says the state protects people from discrimination and, in the same subdivision, protects "all persons from wholly unfounded charges of discrimination."
Then there is the record, which I cannot show you, because it does not exist in public. The Department's most recent report to the legislature, covering January 1 through June 30, 2026, breaks the period's new charges — 477 by the report's text, 447 by its own table header — into a basis-by-area table. The finest category in it is "Race" — 221 of 1,167 basis-area entries, 18.9 percent, with 100 of those in employment. There is no hair line and no subdivision 36a line. Nothing in that report, or in the one before it, tells a Minnesotan whether the 2023 amendment has been invoked once or a hundred times. I searched the case law for a Minnesota decision applying subdivision 36a and found none.
And the queue is slow enough to matter. That same report shows 1,305 cases in inventory, 584 of them more than a year old, worked by 31 full-time employees. Average time to a conclusion: 522 days, up from 439 in the preceding six-month period. Average time to a no-probable-cause determination: 598 days, up from 499. Of 367 cases closed, 242 ended in no probable cause and 13 in a probable-cause or split determination. A right you exercise by waiting nineteen months is a right with a tax on it.
Texas shows how that ends. In George v. Barbers Hill Independent School District, a Black high-school student was disciplined over the length of his braided hair, the district sued for a declaration that its rule was lawful, a trial court agreed with the district, and on January 22, 2026 the Texas court of appeals held the case moot because the student had graduated in May 2025. It vacated the trial court's judgment and dismissed for want of jurisdiction. Twenty-eight months of litigation under a CROWN Act, and no answer to the question.
What we can do
Make the Department count the trait, not just the class. MDHR already codes every charge by basis and area for its semiannual report to the legislature. Adding a trait sub-code under "Race" is a database field, not a bill. Until it exists, nobody — legislator, employer, or worker — can say whether this law is working.
Staff the queue to the deadline the statute already sets. Section 363A.29, subdivision 2, tells the commissioner to determine probable cause or no probable cause "within one year of the filing of a case in which the time has not been tolled," and § 363A.28, subdivision 6, repeats the 12-month command for charges outside the statute's priority categories. The Department is averaging 598 days to a no-probable-cause determination with 31 people on the inventory. The fix is appropriations and case-processing capacity, not a new statute.
Put the exits in writing at intake. One year to file. Forty-five days and you may leave for district court, where a jury is available. Choosing a local commission forecloses the Department. Those are four sentences that change what a person can do, and most people never hear them.
Rewrite grooming policies in terms of the job. A hairnet in a kitchen and hair tied back near machinery are rules about the work. "Professional appearance" is a rule about someone's opinion of a person. An employer that makes that edit today narrows the exposure and keeps every legitimate standard it had.
A grooming policy is entitled to ask what the job requires. It is not entitled to ask someone to stop looking like themselves in order to keep it.
First the facts. Then the fix.
Sources
Minn. Stat. § 363A.03, subd. 36a, was pulled raw from the Revisor of Statutes and quoted in full; the section's History line names 2023 c 3 as the amending act. The session law itself, 2023 Minn. Laws ch. 3 (H.F. No. 37), was read on revisor.mn.gov in the Revisor's strike-and-insert display: its title states that it adds a definition of race to the Human Rights Act by adding a subdivision to § 363A.03, its text contains a single section, and its foot records "Presented to the governor January 31, 2023" and "Signed by the governor January 31, 2023, 7:51 p.m." Because the act specifies no effective date, Minn. Stat. § 645.02 supplies it — that section, also pulled raw, provides that a non-appropriation act "takes effect on August 1 next following its final enactment," making the operative date August 1, 2023. The operative provisions were read raw as well: § 363A.02 (public policy, including the clause protecting persons from "wholly unfounded charges of discrimination"); § 363A.04 (liberal construction); § 363A.08, subd. 2 (unfair employment practices and the bona fide occupational qualification exception); § 363A.11, subd. 1 and § 363A.13 (public accommodations and educational institutions); § 363A.07, subd. 3 (local commissions and the election between agencies); § 363A.28, subds. 1, 3, 6, and 10 (filing a charge, the one-year limit, the 12-month probable-cause determination, and the disparate-impact standard); § 363A.29, subds. 2 and 4 (the one-year determination command; administrative remedies, treble compensatory damages, punitive damages capped at $25,000); and § 363A.33, subds. 1, 6, 7, 8, and 9 (civil actions, the 45-day exit, jury trial, attorney's fees, treble compensatory damages, and equitable relief). The enforcement numbers come from one primary document: the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, Report to the Legislature, Biannual Report: Jan. – June 2026, dated July 30, 2026, filed under the Department's reporting mandate at 1997 Minn. Laws ch. 239, art. 1, § 15, and read in full — new charges given as 477 in the narrative and 447 in the header of the report's own table; the Basis-Area-Filing table showing Race at 221 of 1,167 entries (18.9 percent) with 100 in employment and no trait-level breakdown; 1,305 cases in inventory with 584 over 365 days; 31 full-time employees; 367 cases closed, 242 no probable cause, 13 probable cause or split; averages of 522 days to conclusion and 598 days to a no-probable-cause determination. That this is in fact the Department's most recent report under the mandate was established from the Legislative Reference Library's mandated-reports database, which catalogs every filing under 1997 Minn. Laws ch. 239 and records this one as received July 31, 2026. The immediately preceding report — Biannual Report: July – Dec. 2025, dated January 30, 2026 — was read for comparison and supplies the 439-day and 499-day figures; it uses the same table structure, with no hair or trait category, and the report before that one, covering July–Dec. 2024, is the same again. The Texas comparison and George v. Barbers Hill Independent School District, No. 01-24-00789-CV (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] Jan. 22, 2026) (mem. op.), come from the opinion itself, read in full on CourtListener: it quotes Tex. Educ. Code § 25.902, states the September 1, 2023 effective date and that the Texas act added sections to the Education, Labor, and Property Codes, recites the trial court's judgment for the district, and holds the case moot on the student's May 2025 graduation, vacating the judgment and dismissing for want of jurisdiction.
One thing I could not verify and will not paper over: whether any charge has ever been filed in Minnesota invoking the hair provision. The Department's published reports stop at the basis "Race," and a search of available case law turned up no Minnesota decision applying § 363A.03, subd. 36a — that is an absence of published evidence, not evidence that no charge exists. Several arithmetic notes on the July 2026 report, which a reader should see rather than trust me about. It gives 477 new charges in its narrative and 447 in the header of its own table. Its four closure categories — 55 mediated, 270 for the respondent, 42 for the charging party, 29 withdrawn — sum to 396 against a stated 367 closures, and the shares it prints for them sum to 108 percent. The two lines under the charging-party category, 13 and 28, sum to 41 against the stated 42. And its basis-by-area table prints twelve basis columns that add to 1,151 beneath its own printed total of 1,167; the prior report's table carried fourteen columns, three of which this one no longer prints. The Department explains none of it, and I have not adjusted a single figure. The report before this one had its own version of the problem: four closure categories summing to 509 against a stated 499, and a mediation share given as 14 percent where 64 of 499 is 12.8 percent. This piece runs past the series target of 1,100 to 1,400 words; the overage is statutory text and Department figures I was not willing to cut. Nothing here is legal advice or creates an attorney-client relationship. Corrections: campaign@madgettformn.com.