Thread by @galenleigh

THREAD: My tweet about our suit challenging a school dress code requiring girls to wear skirts has generated lots of feelings--mainly incredulity that this can still be happening today. Here's further info about the case & our clients' fight to be treated equally at school: (1/)

The school, a public charter school, has justified the skirts requirement as promoting “chivalry”--the email from the founder explaining this justification is exhibit B to the complaint.
aclu.org/legal-document…

In the founder's words, chivalry means that a woman is “regarded as a fragile vessel that men are supposed to take care of and honor." The school has doubled down, justifying the requirement as promoting “traditional values” &“norms...about the difference between the sexes.”

Our clients are active kids who don't want to be treated as fragile or different than boys. They want the freedom to do sports, climb, & do cartwheels w/o worrying about their undergarments showing, or being teased or reprimanded for not being “ladylike.”
aclu.org/blog/womens-ri…

As our client KB said “The dress code...made me feel like [school officials] thought girls should not play roughly or be as active and able to move around as freely and comfortably as boys – that we simply weren’t worth as much as boys...that girls are not in fact equal to boys.”

.@ChristiaBrown testified that forcing girls to wear skits/dresses teaches them to limit their movements to “allowed behaviors” in order to "maintain modesty.” Girls who wear feminine clothes are also perceived to be less athletic and may not be encouraged to do sports.

The skirts requirement also harms transgender and gender-non-conforming students by enforcing a rigid and "traditional" notion of sex/gender that erases transgender and nonbinary existence.

The skirts requirement promotes the very sex stereotypes that Title IX was designed to prohibit. It also violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. The school is not exempt from the law because it is a charter: it accepts public $$ and must play by public rules.

The Supreme Court has time and again rejected appeals to “chivalry” and the notion that women are the more “fragile” sex to justify treating women differently, recognizing that this reasoning reflects & perpetuates stereotypes that place women “not on a pedestal, but in a cage.”

The case has been pending for over 3 years. Both sides have moved for summary judgment—a court ruling that they're entitled to win as a matter of law. We are awaiting the judge’s decision. Briefing here. (11/11)
aclu.org/cases/peltier-…