MUSCLE SHOALS, Ala. – An Alabama teenager was sent home on the first day of school last week because school officials believe her hair is too distracting.

Hayleigh Black has had the same vibrant red hear color for nearly three years while attending Muscle Shoals schools, but for a reason administrators allegedly won’t explain they’re now enforcing a school policy and sent the 16-year-old home to change her hair color, according to news reports.

“The district’s code of conduct says students won’t be able to attend classes if their hair is dyed a ‘bright or distracting color’ and in bold letters reads, ‘Dyed hair will be permitted only if the hair is dyed a natural human hair color,’” according to AL.com.

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“Red can be grown, so that’s where we weren’t understanding each other,” Kim Boyd, Hayleigh’s mother, told the news site.

The incident left Black with an unexcused absence, and her parents are concerned that it could pose a problem with final exam exemptions. Students with A or B averages in Muscle Shoals are not required to take their final exams if they have good attendance, according to media reports.

The family has hired attorney Jonathan McGee, who sent the high school’s assistant principal Chad Holden a letter that contends the decision to send Black home violated her First and 14th Amendment rights, the Times Daily reports.

“I just don’t understand how Hayleigh’s hair on Thursday was going to materially and substantially interfere with operation of the school,” McGee told the news site. “Red is a natural hair color. It is embarrassing and humiliating to be singled out, but especially for a 15-year-old.”

Black simply wants her unexcused absence to be excused, but school officials don’t seem to care.

“As a new principal, my expectations are to enforce every school board policy and every rule in the student handbook, and that’s what I did on the first day and what I will continue to do,” Holden told the Times Daily.

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What is perhaps the silliest part of the whole episode is that Black is an honor roll student who has not caused  problems or distracted students in the past. As McGee rightly point out, the school hair policy is “vague, arbitrary and the enforcement of it has been inconsistent, especially in Hayleigh’s case,” the Times Daily reports.

In the past, Hayleigh and other students have dyed their hair to show school pride without issue, according to media reports.

Now, the teenager sports a new blonde hairdo, but told the media “I just don’t feel like myself.”

Her friends created a Facebook page and have worn red to school to support the teen, but she’s been affected by the incident more than some people realize, her mother told the Times Daily.

“When I picked her up Friday afternoon, her lip was quivering and her eyes were tearing up,” Boyd said. “She said her friends kept says ‘You don’t look like yourself.’

“She said to me, ‘Mom, I just want to be me. I just want to be Hayleigh who has her red hair back.”