Charter School Girls Get New Look at Challenge to Skirt Rule

The parents of three female students, who say a North Carolina charter school’s rule requiring girls to wear skirts, jumpers, or “skorts” violates their daughters’ equal protection rights, convinced the full Fourth Circuit to take another look at their case.

A three-judge panel Aug. 9 overturned a lower court’s finding that the rule violated the students’ equal protection rights. Charter Day School and Roger Bacon Academy Inc., which runs the school in rural Brunswick County northwest of Wilmington, aren’t state actors under the U.S. Constitution, the panel said.

That ruling, if allowed to stand, would have far-reaching consequences for the ...