In court papers in the Virginia case, lawyers for the Gloucester County School Board asked the court to preserve the status quo and allow the school’s policy to remain in effect once the school year commenced, while they asked the Supreme Court to take up an appeal of the lower court ruling. The court’s four conservative justices and liberal Justice Stephen Breyer agreed to grant the stay, with three liberals dissenting.
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The Supreme Court sided Wednesday with a Virginia school board opposed to the Obama administration’s directive that transgender students be allowed their choice of public bathrooms.
Block said that Grimm “is a boy and lives accordingly in all aspects of his life” but that “the sex assigned to him at birth was female”.
The case is the first time the fight over transgender bathroom rights has reached the Supreme Court, and the subject arrived in the heat of a USA presidential election in which the makeup of the court is a central issue.
Wednesday’s order means the student, Gavin Grimm, can not use the restroom of his choice when school starts.
The board asked the Supreme Court to block the lower court order as it prepared to appeal the decision. If they deny the school board’s petition for review, an order requiring the board to let Grimm use the boys bathroom will be reinstated.
A lawyer for Grimm, Joshua Block, said he and his client were disappointed by the order and “disappointed that Gavin is going to have to begin another school year being stigmatized and separated from his peers as a result of this policy”.
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Visitors walk outside the U.S. Supreme Court. If the court refuses to hear the case, the stay will dissolve. “I vote to grant the application as a courtesy”, Breyer wrote. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled in his favor in April but put its ruling on hold so the school board could appeal.
