Leading experts in transgender legal concerns, Professors Erin E. Buzuvis and Jennifer L. Levi of Western New England University School of Law Center for Gender & Sexuality Studies filed briefs in support of Virginia high school student Gavin Grimm who sued his school for excluding him from using the boys’ restroom facility at the high school he attends.
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Gavin was allowed to use the boys’ bathroom at school until parents of other students complained.
The option that Grimm use the girls’ restroom “is unrealistic”, the brief says, since “a student like G.G., who identifies and presents as a boy and whom the school treats as a boy in every other respect”, can’t “walk into a girls’ restroom without creating a situation that is disruptive”.
The brief “sends a crucial message to schools across the country – transgender youth are valuable members of our community who are entitled to full protection of the law”, Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin said.
On Wednesday, the Obama administration filed a legal brief in support of Grimm’s lawsuit. “No one should be humiliated or marginalized by the adults responsible for helping them to achieve”.
Grimm, a student at Gloucester County High School, filed a lawsuit in June against the Gloucester County School Board.
“Treating a student adversely because the sex assigned to him at birth does not match his gender identity is literally discrimination ‘on the basis of sex, ‘” the brief says.
The HRC Foundation, the educational arm of the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender ( LGBT ) advocacy organization, works with many schools that want to do right by transgender students through its Welcoming Schools program.
Schools must allow students to use the restroom that corresponds with their gender identity or be in violation of the law, according to the federal government.
Attorneys with the Department of Education’s Office of the General Council and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division filed the 40-page brief with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., on behalf of Gavin Grimm. The brief details the social science research that highlights the role schools play in developing and supporting positive self-identities for all students.
Similar bathroom bans have been proposed in schools and states across the US. “I am boy (sic), and it is important to me to live life like other boys do, including using the boys’ bathroom”.
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With the help of the ACLU, Grimm sued his school district on grounds of discrimination.
