SUPREME COURT TO TAKE UP A TRANSGENDER RIGHTS CASE
Justices will decide if students can use preferred bathrooms
The Supreme Court agreed Friday to take up the issue of transgender rights.
The justices will consider a Virginia school district’s challenge to Obama administration guidelines requiring that schools allow transgender students to use restrooms matching their chosen gender, rather than birth gender.
A federal appeals court ruled in April for high school student Gavin Grimm in one of several lawsuits challenging the Department of Education rule.
The justices could have sidestepped the issue pending action by other appellate courts but decided to wade in now. The case is likely to be heard by April and decided by late June.
Grimm, a 17- year- old high school senior in Gloucester County, Va., identified as a boy several years ago and eventually sought to use the boys’ bathroom in school.
He is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, whose legal director, Steven Shapiro, said, “We want to get it resolved for his benefit as fast as we can.”
Ironically, Grimm’s opportunity to set a nationwide standard for transgender students will work against his own wishes during his senior year. That’s because the Supreme Court in August blocked his victory at the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit from taking effect while it considered the school board’s petition. Had the high court turned down the case, Grimm would have won boys’ bathroom rights immediately.
“I never thought that my restroom use would ever turn into any kind of national debate. The only thing I ever
“I never thought that my restroom use would ever turn into any kind of national debate.” Gavin Grimm
asked for was the right to be treated like everyone else,” Grimm said in a statement issued by the ACLU.
Twenty- three states, including North Carolina and Texas, have challenged the administration’s right to interpret its own regulations without legislative action or judicial review. And several conservative justices have argued in the past that agencies have no such power.
The court refused Friday to take up that broader issue as part of Grimm’s case.
The battle over so- called bathroom bills has played out in many states as conservative lawmakers seek to force students to use facilities that correspond to their gender at birth and transgender students fight for the right to follow their gender identity.
Grimm’s case is based on the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection as well as Title IX, a federal law that bars sex discrimination in education. The Education Department invoked that law when issuing its guidelines in May, threatening federal enforcement — including the loss of federal education funds.