Federal Court Rules North Carolina School’s Skirt Requirement Unconstitutional in Blow to Charter School Independence
A North Carolina charter school violated the Constitution by requiring female students to wear skirts, a federal court has ruled.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals ruled 10–6 that the state-funded Charter Day School in Brunswick County, N.C., had violated the Equal Protection rights of three female students, whose mothers brought the suit.
The school, which emphasizes “traditional values” and “traditional manners,” had previously required all its pupils between kindergarten and grade-eight to adhere to a dress code of “discipline and order” – mandating that young girls wear a “skirt, jumper, or skort.”
Per the school’s policies, the penalties for deviance included removal from class, suspension, or expulsion.
In 2015, one of the two lead plaintiffs, Bonnie Peltier, requested an exemption for her daughter based on her personal objection to the policy, which she deemed discriminatory. It was denied, with the school’s founder, Baker A. Mitchell III writing back to say the school intended to “preserve chivalry and respect among young women and men.”
In the same letter, he described ‘chivalry’ as “a code of conduct where women are treated as a fragile vessel that men are supposed to take care of and honor.” The skirt requirement, he claimed, was intended to “treat girls courteously and more gently than boys.” Mitchell’s stated that the school was one “of choice,” and that parents were free to withdraw their children if they couldn’t comply.
Peltier and two other parents, thereafter, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, alleging that CDS’s policy was “rooted in gender stereotypes” that discriminated against their daughters on the basis of sex, thereby violating the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, which bans sex-based discrimination in federally funded schools. The school, meanwhile, argued the suit did not apply because it was not publicly funded.
In discovery hearings before the trial, many young girl students – who remain unnamed in the judgement – testified that the policy had hurt their self-esteem. One stated that she felt she “simply wasn’t worth as much as boys,” due to the attitude of fragility towards girls at the school.
Other students said that they avoided climbing, using the swings, playing soccer, or participate in emergency drills where they had to crawl on the floor – fearing that boy students would tease them or look at their underwear through the skirts.
Before trial began, the District Court in 2019 summarily ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and struck down CDS’s policy, finding that it violated the equal protection clause, though he denied judgement on the Title IX claim.
Senior District Judge Malcolm Howard, a Reagan appointee, wrote plainly that “the skirts requirement causes the girls to suffer a burden the boys do not, simply because they are female.” He also noted that “none of the Board members deposed could explain how requiring girls to wear skirts specifically furthered the [chivalry] policy’s stated goals.”
However, upon appeal by CDS, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit vacated Howard’s judgement in November of 2021, allowing the policy to be reinstated. Writing for the unanimous majority, Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum, Jr., a Trump appointee, said that the school’s claim that it wasn’t a “state actor” was correct, thereby preventing the 14th Amendment from applying.
The rest of the 4th Circuit, however, disagreed. By a vote of the full court, Quattlebaum’s judgement was vacated, and the case was reheard en banc, or before all members of the court.
In that case, decided on Tuesday, the 4th Circuit split 10-6 in favor of the plaintiffs, once again banning the policy. In her scathing judgement, Senior Circuit Judge Barbara Milano Keenan, an Obama appointee, wrote that “sex-based stereotypes advanced by CDS utterly fail” to comply with the Equal Protection Clause, and would have “devastating consequences for young girls.”
Ruling that CDS was a state actor, it was required to ensure compliance. She added, “It is difficult to imagine a clearer example of a rationale based on impermissible gender stereotypes.”
Judge Quattlebaum, writing a dissent joined by the court’s Republican appointees, said that the majority’s conclusion that a charter school was a “state actor” was wrong, with the question of gender stereotypes being irrelevant to the case.
“That is the least of my concerns,” wrote Quattlebaum, who claimed that “innovative alternatives to traditional public education” will no longer exist if private groups are considered “state actors.”
Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, meanwhile, said that the majority’s logic would impugn the ability of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to curate their treatment of black students.
In a statement after the ruling, Galen Sherwin of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the ruling “should put charter schools across the country on notice” regarding policy changes. In response to an inquiry from National Review, a publicist for CDS said that the decision will “likely be appealed to the Supreme Court,” though they provided no timeline for the appeal.
