Should the court decide not to hear Gloucester County School Board’s appeal, the order will be reinstated – transgender boy Gavin Grimm will again be allowed to use the boys’ restrooms in that county’s public high schools.
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“Gavin is going to have to begin another school year being stigmatized and separated from his peers as a result of this policy”, said Joshua Block, Grimm’s lawyer.
The case in the Supreme Court concerns Gavin Grimm, who was born female but identifies as a male and will soon start his senior year at Gloucester High School in southeastern Virginia.
It stressed that in September, when the school year commences, Grimm would have access to three single-user restrooms as well as a restroom in the nurse’s office.
The Department of Education wrote that its interpretation “is consistent with courts’ and other agencies’ interpretations of federal laws prohibiting sex discrimination”, and linked to the case.
Following that directive, Doumar issued an injunction on June 23 ordering Gloucester schools to allow Grimm to use the boys’ restrooms, not including locker rooms, while the case proceeds.
The Virginia school board argued that forcing the school to let Grimm use the boys’ bathroom raised privacy concerns and could cause some parents to remove their children from the school.
Well, the Supreme Court made a decision to hit the brakes on that front. In May, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a request by the Gloucester County School Board to rehear Grimm’s lawsuit “en banc” before the full court. Instead, its lawyers sent a “guidance” to school officials advising them that in the department’s view, Title IX, adopted in 1972, means that excluding transgender students from facilities that fit their gender identity amounts to illegal sex discrimination.
Breyer said Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elana Kagan sought to deny the school board’s request for the stay. We are confident that ultimately the Supreme Court will rule in favor of these common sense policies and help transgender students feel comfortable and safe so that they can excel academically in school. He also said he was providing the majority-making vote as “a courtesy” that he said would allow the school board’s bathroom policy to remain in effect for the time being, not as an expression of his views on the topic.
The U.S. District Court in Eastern Virginia initially rejected that argument, and sided with the school board’s claim that Title IX does not protect against discrimination based on gender identity.
The court voted 5-3 to grant the stay sought by the Gloucester County school district after Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. referred the stay application he received last month to the full court.
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As the Supreme Court is yet to rule definitively on the matter, it has set things back to the way they used to be, ahead of its eight justices beginning to hear the case in autumn 2016.
