Hair-raising case: Judge approves long locks at Catholic school. (People & Events).

A Catholic school sophomore in Providence, R.I., has won a legal ruling giving him the fight to wear a foot-long ponytail despite a school policy banning long hair.

Rhode Island Superior Court Judge Stephen I. Fortunato Jr. ruled that St. Raphael Academy intruded "into the home and off-campus life" of 15-year-old Russell Gorman III by ordering him to cut his long blond hair. He issued a permanent injunction barfing the school from expelling Gorman or banning him from school activities, reported the Providence Journal-Bulletin.

In court, William T. Murphy, the attorney for St. Raphael's, argued that as a private entity, the school has the right to enforce hair and dress codes. Fortunato disagreed, writing that Rhode Island law allows state officials to impose various regulations On private schools and their curricula.

"Private schools are different from private bowling leagues, private yacht clubs and private advocacy groups," wrote Fortunato. He asserted that the state licenses private schools "with the express condition that they educate children to be citizens in a democracy. It would be anomalous indeed if people entrusted with this important mission were permitted to impose a 24-hour rule mandating a purposeless conformity to an arbitrary hair code. Democracy does not require--nor has it ever required--robots."

Gorman, an honor student who does three hours of homework a night, enrolled at St. Raphael's in 2001, where his long hair at first attracted little attention. But last year a new principal, Brother Daniel Aubin, came to the school and insisted that Gorman cut his hair.

Gorman's father, who wears his own hair in a ponytail, praised Fortunato as "a good judge" and added, "He should be close to sainthood, that guy. This whole ordeal put an emotional strain on all of us. I give thanks to the Lord, and I'm going to take [my family] down to Florida to go to Disneyland." (Gorman v. St. Raphael' s Academy)