On July 24, 2024, the Governor of Puerto Rico, Hon. Pedro Pierluisi, signed into law Senate Bill 1282, the Law Against Discrimination Based on Hair Styles. This law adopts as public policy the express prohibition of discrimination in the offering of public services, employment, education, and housing, in the public and private sectors, based on individuals’ protective hairstyles or hair textures, which are regularly associated with a particular race and national origin identities. The phrase protective hairstyles is defined by the law as those hairstyles used to maintain curly hair into its natural style including, but not limited to, rolls or tight curls, locs, glued braids, twists, cornrows, Bantu knots and afros.

This law also amends several statutes such as the Puerto Rico Public Service Relations Act, PR Act No. 45-1998; Law for the Administration and Transformation of the Human Resources in the Government of Puerto Rico, PR Act No. 8-2017; Puerto Rico Municipal Code, PR Act No. 107-2020; Puerto Rico Anti-discrimination Law, PR Act No. 100 of June 30, 1959; PR Act No. 90-2020, Law to Prohibit and Prevent the Workplace Harassment in Puerto Rico; and the Puerto Rico Education Reform Act, PR Act No. 131 of May 13, 1943, to reiterate the merit system principle, where all employees shall be recruited, selected, trained, promoted, transferred, demoted and retained in consideration of their capacity and performance of the functions inherent to the position and without discrimination for the aforementioned. Likewise, it will be illegal for any employer or organization to publish, circulate or allow advertisements, notices, or any other form of propaganda denying employment opportunities, directly or indirectly; nor may any employer or labor organization or joint labor-management committee that controls learning, training or retraining programs, including on-the-job training programs, discriminate against their employees or job candidates based on their hair texture or for wearing protective hairstyles. In addition, acts such as comments or mockery directed at the employee about the employee's physical appearance or protective hairstyles and hair textures that are regularly used will be considered conduct constituting workplace harassment.

All agencies, instrumentalities, departments, public corporations of the Executive Branch, as well as the municipalities, the Legislative and the Judicial Branch, are ordered to revise their personnel policies to clearly state the public policy against discrimination of any sort. Likewise, every private employer and private educational institution must adopt or modify its policies in compliance with this law.

*Mariel Torres, a second-year law student from the University of Puerto Rico Law School, assisted in the preparation of this article.