Charter School Fails To Convince SCOTUS That Girls Are 'Fragile Vessels' Who Must Wear Skirts

Even this Supreme Court didn't want to bother hearing their arguments.

In a relatively surprising move, the US Supreme Court has declined to hear Charter Day Schools v. Peltier , the case of a North Carolina charter school hoping to defend its bizarre dress code policy forcing female students to wear skirts instead of pants, in order to promote "chivalry" and ensure that girls are "regarded as a fragile vessel that men are supposed to take care of and honor."

The Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia found last year that the dress code violated the 14th amendment and the constitutional rights of the girls in the school, because its purpose was perpetuating (absurd) gender stereotypes. Charter Day School, which is a part of the Roger Bacon Academy charter network, argued that, because it is a charter school and not a public school, its students did not have any constitutional rights and therefore girls at the school were not entitled to equal protection under the law. However, because charter schools, like public schools, are funded by taxpayer dollars, the Fourth Circuit found that they did.

The school had obviously hoped that the extremely conservative Supreme Court would take up their case and allow them to resume discriminating against girls, but that did not happen. It's actually surprising, given that the Court has been extraordinarily amenable to the erosion of church and state in education, ruling last year that Maine couldn't bar school vouchers from being used at religious private schools because "religious discrimination" and finding in favor of a high school football coach holding prayer sessions for team members. Perhaps the "fragile vessel" thing was a bit too absurd, even for them.

While the school is not expressly religious, Baker Mitchell Jr., the North Carolina businessman who founded the charter network, has claimed to be the victim of anti-religious bias, and several religious groups have filed amicus briefs in support of the school's agenda.

If the dress code were not bizarre enough, the school, which prides itself on enforcing "traditional values," also forces students to say a pledge every morning in which they swear to ignore the advice of experts, refrain from rational arguments, and to always obey those in authority.

I pledge to keep myself healthy in body, mind, and spirit,
staying physically fit,
mentally awake,
and morally straight.

I pledge to be truthful in all my works,
guarding against the stains of falsehood from
the fascination with experts,
the temptation of vanity,
the comfort of popular opinion and custom,
the ease of equivocation and compromise, and
from over-reliance on rational argument.

I pledge to be virtuous in all my deeds,
with the courage to exemplify
faith in my beliefs,
hope for a better future, and
charity towards my neighbor –
with prudence in new undertakings,
with justice when called on to judge,
with fortitude in the face of adversity, and
with temperance toward temptation.

I pledge to be obedient and loyal to those in authority,
in my family,
in my school, and
in my community and country,
So long as I shall live.

This pledge feels like the equivalent of Marjorie Taylor Greene waking up every day and actually saying to herself "I vow to be a ridiculous person who doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about." It just doesn't seem like the kind of thing you're supposed to say to yourself, about yourself, but rather the things that people who don't like you might say about you. Isn't everyone at least supposed to pretend that they're the ones making rational arguments and that other people are the ones mindlessly obeying authority?

But the scariest thing about this school isn't its dress code or its pledge — it's the fact that taxpayers are funding it at all to begin with. Conservatives may feel that regular public schools have an implicit liberal bias (perhaps because, as Stephen Colbert once said, facts have a well-known liberal bias), but the brainwashing that is going on in these schools is absolutely explicit, and certainly not something that everyone's collective tax dollars should go towards funding.

Even more concerning is the fact that an Oklahoma charter system just voted to approve St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School , a K-12 charter school that will be run by the actual Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, which would be the first explicitly religious charter school in the nation.

Conservatives tend to misunderstand the purpose of public funding for social programs. They think of these things as giveaways meant to benefit individuals. But their actual purpose is to benefit us all, as a society. We need to educate children because we need educated adults in order for our nation to function properly.

We don't fund public schools as a lovely gesture to improve the lives of individuals, but rather because it benefits us as a society. It does not benefit us, as a society, to fund schools that include religious instruction or gender discrimination or, frankly, weird right-wing brainwashing pledges. If conservatives want their daughters to learn that the are "fragile vessels," or for their children to receive a religious education, then that is something they should pay for with their own money, not everyone else's.

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