Justice Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan dissented. Obama has also issued an order through the Department of Education that all public schools should accommodate transgender students with bathrooms and locker rooms which coincide with their gender identity.
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Grimm, who was born female but identifies as male, argues that the school board’s policy requiring students to use either the restroom that corresponds with their biological gender or a private, single-stall restroom violates Title IX, a federal law that bars sex discrimination in schools.
After informing the Gloucester High School principal about his transition, he received permission to use the boys restroom in 2014 for several weeks, he said.
In the mean time, West Virginia Attorney General, Patrick Morrisey, says he agrees with the Supreme Court decision.
The eight-member Supreme Court voted 5-3 to stay the lower court’s order.
Grimm and the LGBT community were happy with the lower court’s decision.
Even though the court is now on recess for the summer, five justices agreed to the request – Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer ― but didn’t provide a reasoning for their move.
Days later, Doumar rejected the School Board’s request to stay the injunction.
Grimm has asked a federal court and an appeals court to allow him to use the bathrooms while the lawsuit proceeds. School administrators have a responsibility to advance policies that enrich all of their students – including their transgender students.
However, 13 states have sued, calling the interpretation an “overreach”, as The Christian Science Monitor reported in June. The judge said he would rule on the request shortly.
But the latest ruling overturns that order temporarily while it decides whether to intervene in his case.
The appeal in the Gloucester case raised a procedural issue that no doubt drew the interest of the conservative justices.
The National Center for Lesbian Rights filed an amicus brief in the Fourth Circuit case on behalf of the World Professional Association of Transgender Health and other medical and mental health organizations, explaining the current medical consensus that being treated the same as other youth is critical to a transgender young person’s long term health, well-being, and social development. “Banishing transgender students from restrooms used by their peers unquestionably interferes with their equal educational opportunity under Title IX”.
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In April, a federal appeals court ordered a Virginia school district to let trans student Gavin Grimm use the school bathroom associated with his gender identity. A subsequent appeal by the school board would then head back to the Supreme Court, which could either refuse to take the case, thereby affirming the appeals court’s decision, or could hear the case and issue a ruling on whether the restroom policy is indeed constitutional.
