Court Opinion

ID: 9776295
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 19:29:45.450324+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:36.665828
License: Public Domain

SPECTOR, Justice,
dissenting.
Gender bias is not a trivial matter. Just last year, this Court appointed a committee to implement recommendations for the elimination of gender bias in the Texas legal system.1 Today, this same Court turns its back on an indisputable finding of sex discrimination, and unashamedly proclaims that such matters are not worthy of this Court’s consideration. I dissent.
Under the policy at issue, the Colorado Independent School District removes from its classrooms any male students that wear their hair below the bottom of the collar or the bottom of the ear. The trial court found that this policy discriminates against adult male students solely on the basis of gender, and that it is “totally unrelated to the proper objectives of the operation of public high schools.”
The court of appeals did not dispute that the school district’s policy is unconstitutional. It decided, however, that school districts have broad authority to impose unconstitutional policies, and that “the judiciary should not intervene” in such matters. 864 S.W.2d 806, 807. This Court today upholds this decision, immunizing the school boards of Texas from claims of gender discrimination.
*456Since 1972, the Texas Constitution has included an Equal Rights Amendment providing that “[e]quality of the law shall not be denied or abridged because of sex, race, col- or, creed, or national origin.” Tex Const. art. I, § 3a. I agree with Justice Gammage that this provision requires a reversal in this ease.
In the majority’s view, the Equal Rights Amendment simply does not apply to school boards — particularly if the rights at stake are related to gender. To the members of the class in the present case, the majority explains that claims of gender discrimination “do not manifest such an affront to [their] constitutional rights as to merit our intervention in this case.” Supra at 450.
This view cannot be reconciled with the mandate of the Equal Rights Amendment. The adoption of the ERA reflects this state’s commitment to the principles of tolerance, respect for others, and equality under the law. The school district’s policy is at odds with all of these ideals.
The school district does not claim that its policy guards against gang activity, or avoids disruption of the educational process in any way. Instead, it asserts that the policy is a device that “teaches the community’s societal values.”2 According to the district, students must learn that a private employer has “the right to be irrational”:
If [a student] walks out of our school system with the naive opinion that everybody has to comply with the constitution, we haven’t taught him everything there is about the real world.3
Thus, the school district’s position is that the very irrationality and unconstitutionality of the policy teach the important lesson of obedience to arbitrary rules, and that judicial interference hinders the teaching of that lesson.
The only real lesson taught by the school district’s policy — and, for that matter, by today’s decision — is that local school officials are free to make arbitrary distinctions based solely on gender. Young Texans will thus learn that gender stereotypes have this state’s blessing. The Constitution may appear to say otherwise; but in reality, the law is irrelevant.
Until we start taking gender bias claims seriously, the Texas ERA will never have the effect it was meant to have. For the present, we can only hope that the school boards of Texas will show greater respect for individuals’ rights under the ERA than this Court has shown today.

. Order Appointing Gender Bias Reform Implementation Committee, Mise. Docket No. 94 — 9175 (Oct. 18, 1994).

. Oral argument of T.L. Rees, Sr., counsel for Colorado Independent School District, November 16, 1994.

. Id.