After three years, The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) settled their lawsuit against the Classical Charter Schools of America in North Carolina for $1.456 million. The initial case was brought together by parents and children of the school who challenged the mandatory “skirts only” rule for girls. During the ACLU’s investigation of the school’s policy, the school shared that its uniform ruling was based on the belief that every girl is a “fragile vessel” and by wearing skirts they were promoting “chivalry.”
“We think that [logic around girls wearing skirts] ultimately harms all students and sends the message to many, especially the girls, students of color and LGBTQ+ students, that they don't belong there,” ACLU Staff Attorney Jennesa Calvo-Friedman tells Teen Vogue.
Sex-based uniform protocols are an arbitrary tactic that continuously alienate gender non-conforming students and gravely limits young people’s self expression.
“Something that we hear over and over again from students and from parents that complying with somebody else's idea of what it means to be a boy or what it means to be a girl or how people should act or behave in terms of gender really just has nothing to do with students' ability to learn,” Calvo-Friedman says. “And it's shocking how much energy, attention, and resources some schools are willing to put into enforcing these very rigid boundaries when there are so many other learning-based goals to focus on.”
Enforcing these archaic systems pushes students to prioritize their outfits over their education. Bella Booth attended the Classical Charter Schools of America and often struggled with the skirt requirement while growing up. She preferred to wear pants, but was told not to. She was just nine years old when a few students gathered together to push back on the skirts only rule. Now, at eighteen, she realizes just how much it affected her.
“As a woman, you have long hair, and you wear a skirt,” Booth tells Teen Vogue on what she was taught to believe because of her school's dress code. “And I guess that's what I thought was accepted or expected because I was little. That was your stereotypical example of what a woman looks like, because that's what they taught us.”
The school’s strict policies on what girls and boys are supposed to wear forced Booth to reevaluate her upbringing and perspective on society standards. “[These gender-based uniforms] give you an expectation of what a gender is supposed to look like as a kid and I had to deconstruct what I was taught there,” she says.
The charter school also agreed to drop its requirement that boys have short hair in response to a separate incident where the school reportedly told a member of the Waccamaw Siouan Tribe that her son’s hair — worn long by Waccamaw Siouan men and boys for thousands of years — was “faddish” and must be cut.
Gender-based uniforms while traditional in mindset still exist in the present day. The ACLU recently launched a gathering form to collect stories from people that have encountered dress and appearance policies at their school or workplace that treated them differently based on gender stereotypes. Their goal is to remind the broader public that this is a form of discrimination that won’t go unnoticed.
“It's our big-picture goal to correct that pervasive oversight,” Calvo-Friedman says. “And from our point of view, we don't want to have to sue schools. It's way better for everyone if schools and school boards take that responsibility seriously on the front end so that students don't have to experience being discriminated against.”
