The Supreme Court has declined to hear a case involving a North Carolina charter school's dress code, leaving in a place a lower court's ruling that girls at Charter Day School can choose to wear pants instead of skirts. Parents of Charter Day students challenged the skirts-only dress code for girls, saying it violated the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection under the law and federal Title IX protections, NPR reports. The school says it focuses on "traditional values"—and according to its founder, girls should wear skirts as a reminder that they are a "fragile vessel that men are supposed to take care of and honor."
The school operates independently but it receives 95% of its funding from the government and is considered a public school under state law. "Today's announcement is a victory for the thousands of students who attend public charter schools in North Carolina and for the 3.6 million students like them nationwide," said Ria Tabacco Mar, director of the ACLU Women's Rights Project. "Girls at public charter schools have the same constitutional rights as their peers at other public schools—including the freedom to wear pants. We will continue to fight for all girls to learn in safe and equal schools."
The ruling that SCOTUS left in place said the school is a "state actor" that works on behalf of the government. Religious liberty groups and the attorneys general of 10 Republican-led states had urged the top court to take up the case, Politico reports. Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, welcomed the decision to turn the case down. "Charter schools are public schools and are, in fact, state actors for the purposes of protecting students' federal constitutional rights," she said in a statement. (More US Supreme Court stories.)
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