Lawsuit: Ohio teacher tied boy's hair in ponytails

CINCINNATI—A southwestern Ohio woman has filed a lawsuit accusing a sixth-grade teacher and a teacher's aide of humiliating her son for his long hair by tying it into ponytails, making him stand in front of classrooms and encouraging students to mock him.

Amanda Anoai, of Milford, filed the lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati on behalf of her 11-year-old son, referred to in the suit as J.A. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and charges that school officials violated the boy's constitutional rights and intentionally inflicted emotional distress.

The lawsuit alleges that on Sept. 29, J.A. was asked by his language arts teacher at Boyd E. Smith Elementary School in Milford to deliver a message to another room. The teacher told the class that she was going to play a prank, and when he returned, the teacher's aide approached J.A. with a pair of hair clippers and pretended to shave his hair, the lawsuit states.

The teacher pulled the boy's hair into three ponytails—one above each ear and one atop his head—with bands and introduced him to the class as a new student with a female name, the lawsuit alleges. The teacher's aide walked him to other sixth-grade classrooms to show his ponytails, and classmates laughed and called him names including "girl," "ponytails" and "pigtails," according to the lawsuit.

Being forced to show classmates the ponytails "caused J.A. extreme humiliation, embarrassment and emotional distress,"