A Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) adjudicator has said he will have to consider whether a school’s rules on ear piercings might amount to indirect discrimination after noting an argument advanced by a boy’s solicitor that ear piercings had “significance in terms of gender [and] sexual orientation”.
In a complaint under the Equal Status Act 2000, the complainant’s solicitor said there was “a contention that a boy shouldn’t wear earrings” on the part of the school’s principal and claimed his client was told that his options were to either take out his ear stud or to have both ears pierced.
The solicitor argued that this amounted to “imposing upon this child a submission to a particular type of identity” – since he said the general practice in the local area was that “two earrings are generally worn by girls”, an earring in the left ear was “indicative of heterosexuality” and an earring in the right pointed to “gay identity”.
In his evidence to the tribunal, the 16-year-old student said his principal “was like a heat lock-on missile” and “just kept roaring and roaring” when his mother was called in during an impasse over his new ear piercing at the start of the school term.
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The young man told an equality hearing on Thursday that he believed he had not breached the school’s uniform code by wearing a single ear piercing to school – but that the school’s insistence that students were only allowed to wear either two ear piercings or none was discriminatory.
The school denies the claim.
The student, who is in transition year, arrived to school on September 30th this year with the upper cartilage of his left ear newly pierced and a round silver stud through it, the tribunal heard.
The school considered it to be in breach of the uniform rules in its code of behaviour, which forbids “all body piercings except one small stud in each ear”, the tribunal heard. However, the young man and his family said their view of the rule, as written, was that it set a limit on the number of studs per ear.
“I think their intention is that boys don’t wear studs ... I think they know boys won’t pierce the other ear because they’ll be called gay, they’ll be called names. They won’t go through the hassle of it, and they’ll take it out,” the claimant told the WRC.
Asked why he chose to wear the ear stud, the young man said: “It’s my grandad – it’s a sense of my personality, following in the footsteps.”
The student’s solicitor, Gerard Cullen, said his client was presented with the choice to either “remove the stud or pierce the other ear” – with three weeks of healing time with a plaster in place and the piercing in place. He called that “interference with bodily integrity”.
Counsel for the school Kevin Roche said that after the young man instructed a solicitor in the matter, he had been sent a legal letter to say he would be considered to be “in compliance” if he “covered the ear with plaster”.
However, he said that had already been offered to the young man, and rejected.
Under cross-examination, the boy said the rule was “not fully enforced for the girls” at the school.
His grandmother had earlier told the tribunal that her husband and all of her sons had worn piercings in their left ears.
“I suppose it’s a bit like a woman wearing a wedding ring on her left hand,” she said. “If they don’t like studs, ban them all. [Boys] are going to be called a sissy, and it’s not fair.”
The complainant claims he has been subject to sanctions over the issue, including being placed sitting outside the principal’s office, being denied leave to go to town on his lunch break, and being assigned to evening detention resulting in him missing his bus home.
The school’s position is that it followed its disciplinary code at all times and sought to de-escalate the matter with its barrister telling the tribunal that the first mention of legal action was on the part the complainant’s solicitor.
In his own evidence, the principal denied banging the table with his fist or slamming his laptop shut in the manner alleged by the three complainant witnesses but said he did raise his voice to them.
A decision is due in the new year.
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