The Problem With Hats
By: Indigo Null
It was the 1 pm docket on November 28th, 2023. Judge Harding was presiding. An older Black woman came into the courtroom early in the docket, clearly upset. She looked confused, and was shaking and visibly tearing up. The bailiff noticed her immediately. She was wearing a hat, and he told her to take it off or she would have to leave the courtroom, ignoring her clear distress. She took a brush out of her bag and, leaving some of her things on the bench, left the courtroom. She did not even have a chance to check in yet.
She came back several minutes later, openly crying now, but hatless. She sat down again and the bailiff continued to watch her like a hawk, hovering near her and looking at her more frequently than anyone else in the courtroom. This attention clearly further distressed the woman.
Partway through a hearing, a notification chimed from her cellphone. The bailiff moved quickly to take it from her, but she got up and left. The bailiff turned to the clerk. “She’ll be back” he said. When she came back a few minutes later, still crying, phone off this time, he immediately and disruptively cornered her and demanded her cell phone, which was now off. She handed it over defeatedly and took her things and left the courtroom. She would have to come back at the end of the day to get it.
A BRU Advocate managed to find her in the hall, and discovered that she was there for a hearing for her daughter’s case. She didn’t know where to go and had left her hearing notice at home, and had anxiously been waiting for someone at home to send her the information she needed. Without her phone, she didn’t know what to do. Luckily, the woman was not here for a failure-to-pay-rent, but another type of hearing, and thus her name was displayed on the screens. Her courtroom was upstairs. With help, she managed to find the right courtroom.
The court has a policy of asking tenants to remove hats and keep cell phones off, but the enforcement is often inconsistent. For example, one day, advocates noted that multiple tenants had been told to remove religious head coverings by the same bailiff, although others did not. Advocates observed it was basically up to whatever bailiff worked each day whether wearing a bandanna, bonnet or head scarf would cause an issue. In light of how the overwhelming majority of tenants facing eviction are Black, these interactions have echoes of the policies that have led to CROWN Acts and religious protections in schools and other public places across the country.
Similarly, the cell phone policy seems harsh and unequally enforced. Sometimes landlord agents have their phones on and out in the courtroom to check emails while they wait to be called. But if a bailiff so much as sees someone else’s phone, even if it’s off or silent, it’s likely to be confiscated. In one instance, BRU advocates witnessed bailiffs surround a man who was leaving and handcuff him to confiscate his phone.
Enforcement of these policies should at the very least be equitable and nonthreatening, and interactions with this tenant could have been handled in a way that encouraged the woman to communicate with bailiffs about her concerns and ultimately get help finding her courtroom. Instead this was used as an opportunity to increase her distress and delay her ability to handle her business in an interaction that has uncomfortable similarities to schoolyard bullying.