The US Supreme Court has put on hold a lower court ruling ordering a Virginia school district to allow a transgender boy to use a bathroom for males.
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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit disagreed, and issued an injunction that required the school to allow transgender students to use restrooms in accordance to their gender identity.
The case was brought by a transgender student, Gavin Grimm, who contested the school district’s refusal to let him use the boys’ bathroom.
The justices blocked a federal appeals court ruling against the Gloucester County School Board while they consider whether to hear the case.
The school board later adopted a policy requiring students to use facilities corresponding to their birth gender, but said that “students with gender identity issues” would be allowed to use private bathrooms.
The case is G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board.
Grimm’s claim of sexual discrimination had initially been dismissed by the court.
“While disappointing, today’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court is just a temporary delay”, NCLR Legal Director Shannon Minter said.
Courtesy votes for a stay aren’t unusual in the Court’s history, although the justices rarely describe them as such to the public.
The Supreme Court’s order blocking a transgender male from using the boys’ restroom at his Virginia school underscores how the presidential election results will shape the high court.
Courtesy votes are an unofficial court tradition that are more commonly applied in capital punishment cases. Breyer, who dissented in a 2008 ruling upholding Indiana’s voter ID law, is less likely to provide a fifth vote to keep the North Carolina law in place, especially after appellate judges said it was enacted to make it harder for African-Americans to vote.
An appeals court ruled earlier this year that the ban was discriminatory and violated Title IX, a federal law which prohibits gender discrimination at schools that receive federal funding.
The more liberal justices on the Supreme Court – U.S. Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – would have denied the application, the order says. In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the school board said it had installed several uni-sex facilities in the high school in response to the dispute. Instead, it is weighing whether excluding transgender kids from certain restrooms amounts to sex discrimination under Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act of 1972.
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The National Center for Lesbian Rights, which filed an amicus brief in the case on behalf of the World Professional Association of Transgender Health and other medical and mental health organizations, also issued a statement.
