Transgender student is face of ‘ bathroom bill’ battle
High school senior awaits Supreme Court review of his case
In court papers, he’s identified only as “G. G.” But he’s not anonymous anymore.
Gavin Grimm is the public face of the latest Supreme Court battle over amore familiar set of initials: LGBTQ rights. Like his lesbian and gay predecessors — such people as Edie Windsor, whose lawsuit led to federal benefits for samesex marriages, and Jim Obergefell, whose lawsuit struck down gay marriage bans nationwide — Grimm may be poised to make history.
He represents the “T” in LGBTQ, for transgender. At 17, he is fighting for the right to use the boys’ bathroom at Gloucester High School in southeast Virginia. If doing so leads to broader civil rights protections for transgender men and women, Grimm says, all the better.
On Saturday morning, as most of his peers prepared for a weekend of football games and parties, Grimm awoke in the nation’s capital and prepared for what likely will be a publicity blitz unlike any he has experienced since suing the school board 16 months ago.
His immediate family circle has grown to include lawyers and staff of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing him in court.
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. Twenty- three states have challenged the administration’s right to interpret its own regulations on the issue without legislative action or judicial review.
Grimm is not the plaintiff before the Supreme Court but the respondent, reflecting his win over the Gloucester County School Board at the U. S. Court of Appeals in April. That verdict prompted the board to seek Supreme Court review.
Now he has to wait until the high court rules— most likely after the school year ends.
“It would have been nice to spend less of my senior year worrying about where I’m going to be using the bathroom,” he said. Instead, Grimm is eager to fight and win at the Supreme Court “to make sure that trans kids that come after me do not have to go through this experience.”
“They sent a very clear message to my peers that I was something different” and “not fit for common spaces,” he said. Being forced to use a single- stall, unisex bathroom or the one in the nurse’s office stigmatized him among other students.