The Gloucester County School Board is apparently in “never say die” mode when it comes to cluttering up the courts with litigation.
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“As such, the School Board intends to file a petition with the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari”, it said.
The ruling was the first by an appeals court finding protections for transgender students under the 1972 Title IX Act, which bars sex-based discrimination by schools receiving federal funding.
Amid a nationwide debate about which bathroom transgender people should be allowed to use, a school board in Virginia is planning to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to settle the issue once and for all.
Because the court is soon recessing for the summer, however, the earliest the court could hear the case – if it decides to take it up – would be sometime late this year or early 2017.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit on Tuesday granted the Gloucester County School Board’s request to put the court’s earlier ruling in the case on hold while it petitions the Supreme Court. “We vacate the district court’s denial of G.G.’s motion for a preliminary injunction and remand the case to the district court for consideration of G.G.’s evidence in light of the evidentiary standards set forth herein”.
The Gloucester County School Board then asked for an en banc review, in which all 15 sitting members of the Fourth Circuit would rehear Grimm’s appeal asking for an injunction and the ability to sue under Title IX. Throughout the course of litigation, both the Department of Justice and Department of Education clarified their legal interpretations of the trans-inclusive nature of existing civil rights law, and the DOJ directly filed a “friend of the court” brief on Grimm’s behalf. In that decision, the appeals court gave deference to an interpretation of Title IX as adopted by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which had previously issued a similar finding in a case out of IL. The request for a review was denied on May 31. Check out my explainer on transgender student issues for more information.
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The case has been closely-watched in the national bathroom wars between transgender rights activists and social conservatives.
