WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a suit challenging a dress code at a North Carolina charter school that required girls to wear skirts.

The decision leaves in place a ruling from a federal appeals court in Virginia that held the dress code violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

Students and parents in Leland, North Carolina, have for years battled the Charter Day School over the uniform policy. The reason for the policy, a school administrator told one of the parents, is that girls are “fragile vessels” deserving of “gentle” treatment by their male classmates.

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Charter schools, created in part to foster innovation into public school systems, are privately run and publicly funded. If the Supreme Court had granted the case, it might have clarified whether charter schools are subject to the same laws as other public schools or act more like private entities.

The Biden administration said last month that it supported the parents.

Courts are likely to wrestle with some of those same questions as they begin weighing the nation’s first religious charter school, an online Catholic school approved by Oklahoma authorities this month.

The case was Charter Day School v. Peltier. Tourists move through the plaza in front of the Supreme Court building April 7, 2023.