ACLU Attacks Local Texas School Dress Codes; Newest Front in War on Normal
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) recently released a study absurdly named, “Dressed to Express: How Dress Codes Discriminate Against Texas Students and Must Be Changed.”
Well, we can’t argue that they buried their lede.
This ridiculous “study” of Texas public and charter school dress codes is nothing more than the first shot across the bow in the American Left’s ever-expanding culture war.
One look at the study’s signatories reveals the usual grab bag of far-left organizations that have increasingly made Texas school children pawns in their quest for power and control.
The ACLU and its authors decry that over half of the Texas school dress codes reviewed “mandated and reinforced rigid and outdated gender norms.”
We suppose anything that “reinforces” the dichotomous realities of biological sex is “rigid and outdated” to the ACLU, but they are not to the vast majority of Texas parents and voters.
The ACLU also singles out head coverings, “hairstyles and textures,” and “worn, frayed, or mis-sized” clothing restrictions as discriminatory.
Laughably, the ACLU even claims that dress codes can be “written with ‘neutral’ or non-discriminatory language,” but they can be “enforced in uneven, targeted, or discriminatory ways.”
Translation: you cannot win, school district. Nothing short of the full embrace of the ACLU’s far-left worldview will protect you from frivolous, and costly, claims of discrimination and lawsuits.
This playbook is not new. The Left has conducted “long marches” through our institutions for years.
First, they conduct a “study” in which they “identify” a problem and declare it a violation of law which may open up a district to a lawsuit. Then they use the “study” to bully school boards and administrators to change policy lest they be sued.
And of course, the study itself is all the “evidence” needed to show the school was “fully aware” of the alleged discrimination and its failure to act is negligent and callous discrimination.
Rinse, repeat.
It is high time our school districts had a partner that sees this form of coercion coming and equips them to combat it.
My organization, Texans for Excellence in Education (TEE), is working on legal guidance and a strong school district policy to prepare our member districts to defend themselves against this nonsense.
We are an alternative to the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB), which for years has had an unchecked monopoly in Texas public education and has abused its position of trust to push woke, leftist policies onto our kids.
It wasn’t that long ago that TASB was parroting the Biden Administration and “encouraging” their member districts to use students’ “preferred” pronouns and to accommodate boys who want to use girls’ restrooms and locker rooms.
Under the veil of “legal guidance,” TASB recommended these things to protect against potential litigation and adverse actions by the federal government.
Sound familiar? It’s because it is the same playbook we’re watching unfold here now with dress codes.
Our schools do not have to cater to the whims of a minority of Texas residents. And they certainly shouldn’t be held hostage under threats of lawsuits and bad headlines.
There is now a choice in board services. TEE stands ready to help commonsense school boards and trustees navigate this latest front in the Left’s culture war that treats children as collateral.
John Petree is the president of Texans for Excellence in Education.
