"Your hair is okay. You are okay."

This year, Hair Love, a story about a black girl and her dad navigating natural hairstyles, won the Oscar for animated short and three beauty pageant winners wore natural hairstyles under their crowns. But as more and more people step out into the world celebrating their natural hair, they are also being met with school and workplace dress codes that punish them under the auspice of “professionalism.” Hair discrimination is a form of racial discrimination, but judges have been hesitant to say so because unlike skin color, people can change their hairstyles. But should they have to?

On this episode of At Liberty, we speak with Mya and Deanna Cook, two students who faced and fought hair discrimination in their school and Ria Tabacco Mar, director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project.

For more, follow us on Twitter @ACLU and @EmersonSJSykes.