High court passes on trans bathroom case
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Monday declined to wade into a dispute about schools barring transgender students from using a bathroom that reflects their gender identity, permitting a lower court ruling against those prohibitions to stand.
At issue in the case was if federal anti-discrimination law applied to LGBTQ students. Gloucester County School Board in Virginia argued its policy of requiring transgender students to use unisex bathrooms was permitted under a 50-year-old law that prohibits discrimination at schools that receive federal funding.
By not taking the case, the Supreme Court without comment let stand a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit that found the school’s policy discriminated against Gavin Grimm, a transgender man who was denied access to the boys bathroom years ago when he was a high school student.
“I am glad that my years-long fight to have my school see me for who I am is over,” Grimm said in a statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented him in the case.
“Trans youth deserve to use the bathroom in peace without being humiliated and stigmatized by their own school boards and elected officials.”
Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have taken the case, though they did not elaborate. The Supreme Court did not rule on the underlying legal questions, and experts say more cases involving transgender rights will arrive at the high court as conservative states pass a bevy of laws restricting those rights.
The case returned to the court at a time when the Biden administration is seeking to expand legal protections for transgender students.
In one of his first executive orders, President Joe Biden said the federal government will seek to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case once before, in 2016, based on guidance from the Obama administration that nudged schools to adopt policies favoring transgender students. But the court dropped the case months later, wiping out a lower court ruling for Grimm, when the Trump administration withdrew the guidance. Biden’s administration reinstated the Obamaera guidance earlier this month.
Grimm’s case continued to wind its way back through the federal courts, even as he graduated from high school and moved to California for college.
The Supreme Court held last year that prohibitions on workplace discrimination on the basis of “sex” also extended protections to LGBTQ Americans. The legal fight between LGBTQ advocates and their opponents has since shifted to whether other laws that bar “sex” discrimination similarly protect people in other settings based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.
That debate featured prominently in Grimm’s case.
Grimm was a rising sophomore when he changed his first name to Gavin and began using male pronouns. Officials at Gloucester High School were supportive, but reaction from parents prompted the school board to bar Grimm from the boys bathroom, directing him instead to unisex bathrooms – three of which were built in response to the controversy.