Protests by middle and high school students against sexist dress codes often follow a dispiriting pattern: Students, usually female, rise up against rules that target them and treat them as distractions. Their complaints gain enough traction that districts form a dress code review committee that hardly ever meets. As time passes, the original student organizers move onto high school or college, so the dress code remains essentially unchanged.
This “wait them out” strategy succeeds without a lot of education kerfuffles as few students or parents keep up the pressure once they’re no longer part of the school.
Sophia Trevino spearheaded a campaign to change the policy at her Cobb middle school after she and 16 other girls were cited for holes in their jeans or other dress code violations on the first day of school this year. The 13-year-old created T-shirts that pointed out the rules were sexist, racist and classist. Her efforts earned national media coverage, and her school ceased handing out violations. Still, the dress code remains.
“I think it is a temporary win. The dress code needs to be officially changed,” said Sophia, who is an eighth grader. “Next year, while I’m not having to follow a dress code in high school, there are going to be other kids at this school who will get the dress code enforced against them.”
As director of the national ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, Ria Tabacco Mar said dress codes fall into categories: those that impose different rules for boys and girls, and those written in seemingly neutral ways but that disproportionately police students of color, trans and nonbinary students. Such codes are not just wrongheaded, they’re illegal, said Mar, whose staff is working with students in North Carolina, Florida and Texas.
Earlier this month, the Women’s Rights Project returned to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of three girls at a public charter school in Leland, North Carolina, who felt it was unfair they had to wear skirts as a condition of attendance. A decision is expected in 2022.
When the mother of a kindergartner questioned the skirt rule, the school’s founder told her it promoted chivalry and respect. The mother continued to request the rule be changed, but the school refused, leading to the courts.
In an earlier legal round on whether sex-specific school dress codes violate federal education law, Judge Barbara Milano Keenan of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote, “No this is not 1821 or 1921. It’s 2021. Women serve in combat units of our armed forces. Women walk in space … serve on our country’s Supreme Court, in Congress, and today a woman is Vice President of the United States. Yet, girls in certain public schools in North Carolina are required to wear skirts to comply with the outmoded and illogical viewpoint that courteous behavior on the part of both sexes cannot be achieved unless girls wear clothing that reinforces sex stereotypes and signals that girls are not as capable and resilient as boys.”
Mandating skirts in 2021 is clearly an anachronism, but is it damaging enough to justify a legal battle? Yes, said Mar.
School dress codes convey to our children that who they are and how they look are unacceptable, said Mar. “Our schools tell them that girls have to wear skirts to be proper, even if that means they’re cold and uncomfortable, that girls’ comfort and their ability to focus at school is less important than boys’. They’re hearing schools tell them your body is a distraction, that you must focus on hiding yourself so other students can focus on learning. These messages demean all of us and have no place in our schools,” she said.
The ACLU recently helped win modifications to the dress code in the St. Johns County School District in northeastern Florida. In May, 80 female students at Bartram Trail High School opened their yearbooks to discover their photos were digitally altered — most clumsily — to cover their collarbones and chests. This outraged female students already upset that the dress code targeted girls. About 80% of dress code infractions in the district over the past three years were issued against female students, according to the ACLU.
Among the students whose yearbook photo was doctored was freshman Riley O’Keefe. “I had no idea until I opened the book and looked at my photo,” she said during a recent ACLU briefing. “I felt almost ashamed, which I shouldn’t have been feeling. That was a mistake on the school’s part.”
In July, with the support of many parents and students, the ACLU warned St. Johns that its dress code and its enforcement violated Title IX and the Constitution’s equal protection clause. The district revised its dress code in August.
“Even though we have some dress code change, this is still a huge problem, not only at my school but at schools all across the country,” said Riley. “Sexual discrimination is a huge thing, and I think we have to remember that even though we won a battle, there’s still a war, and we have to continue fighting for what’s right.”
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