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MSNBC News Live – “School Sued Over Socks”
21-Mar-2007
In 2005, Toni Kay Scott, a student at Redwood Middle School in California, arrived at school wearing socks with a picture of the Winnie-the-Pooh character, Tigger. She was escorted by a police officer to the principal’s office and placed in in-school suspension because the socks violated her school’s dress code, which restricts students to solid-color clothing, free of logos, in only cotton, chino or corduroy fabrics. After efforts to resolve the dispute proved unsuccessful, Scott, along with five fellow students and the ACLU, is fighting back against the school and challenging the dress code.
Sharon O’Grady, a litigator in the San Francisco office of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman and pro bono lawyer for Scott, working in conjunction with the ACLU, said in an interview today, “We are asking the court to hold that the dress code for the Redwood Middle School is unconstitutional and also violates California law and to enjoin the enforcement of the dress code.” The Pillsbury team was headed by Thomas V. Loran, III and also included John E. Janhunen and Alex A.L. Ponce de Leon.
When the MSNBC anchor challenged that school dress codes are not uncommon, O’Grady explained why the Redwood code violates the rights of the students. “There are other public schools that have uniforms, but the California statute requires that parents be allowed to opt their children out of the code,” she said. “Toni Kay's parents weren't allowed to do that in this case. They tried to, and they were told that they could not do that. So whatever you think about the merits of having a uniform policy, the California statute expressly provides that parents can make the decision whether their students have to comply with that uniform policy. And that right was denied the plaintiffs in this case.”
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