U.S. Supreme Court says N.C. school can’t make girls wear skirts

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday upheld a lower court’s ruling that a school could not require its female students to wear skirts by declining to hear the case.

The Charter Day School in Leland, N.C., was appealing the ruling of a lower federal court stipulating that the dress code violated students’ constitutional rights. The Supreme Court rejected the case without comment.

Parents of three students filed suit in 2016 against the K-8 Charter Day School, which had required skirts since opening in 2000. The parents of three girls who were 5, 10 and 14 at the time said their kids were cold in the winter and couldn’t play outdoors or participate fully in drills in which they had to crawl.

In 2019, U.S. District Judge Malcolm Howard ruled that the dress code violated the girls’ rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

“All I wanted was for my daughter and every other girl at school to have the option to wear pants so she could play outside, sit comfortably, and stay warm in the winter,” Bonnie Peltier, the mother of a former Charter Day School student, previously said in a statement.

Last year, a majority on the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the dress code violated the students’ rights.

But Baker Mitchell, the school’s founder, said his goal was to promote “chivalry” among the male students and cultivate respect for female students, creating “a code of conduct where women are regarded as a fragile vessel that men are supposed to take care of and honor,” according to court documents.

In her majority 2019 opinion, Senior Circuit Judge Barbara Milano Keenan kicked that notion to the curb, noting that the policy’s “express purpose” was “telegraphing to children that girls are ‘fragile,’ require protection by boys and warrant different treatment than male students, stereotypes with potentially devastating consequences for young girls.”

With News Wire Services