Supreme Court asks Biden administration to pick sides in North Carolina school skirt case
Kaelan Deese
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The Supreme Court asked the Biden administration this week to weigh in on whether it should take a case over a North Carolina charter school’s dress code requiring its girl students to wear dresses or skirts.
In a brief order Monday, the high court asked Justice Department Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar to add input about whether the justices should take up the case known as Charter Day School v. Peltier, one of several cases in recent years that challenges school dress code policies as discriminatory and sexist.
CHARTER SCHOOL DRESS CODE PUTS CHIVALRY ON TRIAL
A pair of students sued Charter Day School of Leland, North Carolina, claiming the dress code is in violation of their equal protection rights under the 14th Amendment. The school appealed after it lost its battle over the argument in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.
The publicly funded school argued it was not bound to the 14th Amendment because it is not a government body. Because it’s a charter school, they are not controlled by a public school district, attorneys for CDS argue.
But through a 10-6 ruling in June of last year, the 4th Circuit found that the school qualified as a “state actor” because the state delegated to the school the state’s duty to provide a free education, allowing the plaintiffs to continue their legal challenge against the school’s requirements.
“Considering this jaw-dropping assessment of girls’ capabilities, we may never know the full scope or all the consequences of CDS’ blatant, unapologetic discrimination against its female students,” the 4th Circuit wrote in its majority opinion. “But the skirts requirement, harmless as it may seem to the defendants, requires only a pull of the thread to unravel the lifelong social consequences of gender discrimination. In 2022, there is no conceivable basis for allowing such obstacles to girls’ progress in our public schools.”
Six dissenting votes came from Republican-appointed judges, including Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, who argued CDS’ “chivalric approach should neither be legally banished from the educational system, nor should it be legally imposed.”
The 4th Circuit’s ruling noted CDS’ view of the skirt requirement, saying the school thought it was necessary “based on the view that girls are ‘fragile vessels’ deserving of ‘gentle’ treatment by boys.”
One of the student plaintiffs who testified in the case said the dress code sent a signal that girls “simply weren’t worth as much as boys” and “are not in fact equal to boys.”
It “sends the message that girls should be less active than boys and that they are more delicate than boys,” putting boys “in a position of power over girls,” another plaintiff alleged.
The litigation began in 2016 after three then-parents of students at the school, Bonnie Peltier, Erika Booth, and Patricia Brown filed a lawsuit against the school in a federal district court on behalf of their children, who were then in kindergarten, fourth and eighth grade, respectively. One of the female students cited wanting to wear pants in the winter to keep warm while also seeking to “move freely without concerns about modesty.”
The ACLU Women’s Rights Project Director Ria Tabacco Mar stands behind the 4th Circuit’s majority decision, saying girls are entitled to the “same constitutional rights” as their peers and should have the freedom to wear pants, according to Reuters.
Meanwhile, the school’s attorney Aaron Streett was encouraged by the high court’s decision to tap the DOJ for input on the matter, saying it is a “positive sign” because it shows “the court views this as an important case that may merit full review.”
The Supreme Court receives thousands of petitions a year, and each submission has a roughly 20% chance of being accepted for consideration. It takes a vote by at least four justices to tee up a case for future arguments.
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The high court did not state a deadline for the Biden administration to respond to the request.
The Washington Examiner contacted the DOJ for response.