Supreme Court refuses appeal from school that said girls are fragile vessels who have to wear skirts

The Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal to a ruling against a charter school’s gendered dress code. The dress code – which required girls to wear skirts to teach students that women are “fragile vessels,” according to the school’s founder – will remain blocked.

“Girls at public charter schools have the same constitutional rights as their peers at other public schools – including the freedom to wear pants,” said Ria Tabacco Mar of the ACLU, which represented three families that sued the Charter Day School in North Carolina. “We will continue to fight for all girls to learn in safe and equal schools.”

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The case was brought by mother Bonnie Peltier, who said that she enrolled her two kids – her son and her daughter – and noticed that their uniform requirements were different. Her son was allowed to wear pants while her kindergarten daughter was required to wear a skirt. She questioned the policy and argued with the school that it would be harder for her daughter to move and play if she had to wear a skirt.

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But the school’s response shocked her. School founder Baker Mitchell said that the uniform policy was there “to preserve chivalry and respect among young women and men” so that kids would learn that “women are regarded as a fragile vessel that men are supposed to take care of and honor.”

With help from the ACLU, she and several other parents sued. One of the main issues in the case was whether publicly-funded charter schools have to follow many of the same rules that public schools have to follow, including when it comes to protecting children and their right to equal protection under the law.

The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit agreed with the parents and ruled that publicly funded charter schools are state actors and have to follow many of the same rules as traditional public schools.

“It is difficult to imagine a clearer example of a rationale based on impermissible gender stereotypes,” appellate Judge Barbara Milano Keenan wrote for the majority.

The school appealed to the Supreme Court, and the Biden administration weighed in, asking the Supreme Court to deny the school’s appeal. The Court did just that and refused to hear their appeal, leaving the appellate decision intact.

School founder Mitchell denounced the Supreme Court’s decision, saying that it’s “threatening [publicly funded charter schools’] autonomy, subjecting them to the same rules, regulations and political machinations that have crippled government-run school systems, and worst of all, leaving many low-income parents and students with no option other than poorly performing district schools.”

The appeals court decision cited the 2020 landmark LGBTQ Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton Co., where the Court ruled that Title VII’s ban on discrimination because of sex also bans discrimination against LGBTQ people since it’s impossible to discriminate against LGBTQ people without taking sex into account.

Judge Milano Keenan applied Bostock’s logic to the dress code case and said that the school doesn’t eliminate sexism when it has separate gendered dress codes, it “doubles it.”