A federal appeals court has reversed a lower court decision and reinstated a lawsuit accusing a Virginia school district of violating the rights of a transgender high school student by forbidding him from using the boys’ bathroom. On Tuesday, the court backed an Education Department directive that told schools to accommodate transgender students by allowing them to choose which bathroom to use in keeping with Title IX, the Washington Post reported.
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The federal Education Department said it did, and the appeals court ruled, “We conclude that the Department’s interpretation of its own regulation…is to be accorded controlling weight in this case”.
West Virginia joined five other states in a brief urging an appeals court to rule that a transgender teen hadn’t been discriminated against when he was forbidden from using the boys’ restroom at his Virginia high school.
Likewise, the North Carolina Values Coalition issued a statement in which it expressed its discontent with the ruling.
But the ruling doesn’t have any impact on the portions of HB 2 prohibiting municipalities from enacting pro-LGBT non-discrimination ordinances, nor does it hold sway over the part that bars transgender people from using public restrooms in government buildings consistent with their gender identity. “Hopefully this is the beginning of the end of the situation”, Grimm said by telephone. HB2 subjects schools to massive liability, and it puts an estimated $4.5 billion of federal funding from the U.S. Department of Education at risk, as well as other funds a school may receive from another federal source.
The student, Gavin Grimm, was born female but identifies as a male.
North Carolina’s Gov. Pat McCrory strongly disagrees with the 4th Circuit decision, he said on Tuesday afternoon in a meeting with reporters.
Adding plaintiffs who are attending elementary or high schools could help the law’s opponents persuade a judge to halt the transgender bathroom access provisions of the law in public schools, said Maxine Eichner, a law professor at the University of North Carolina.
Although the court’s judgment doesn’t direct the school to change its policies, it sets the legal precedent that “bathroom laws” are considered discriminatory against transgender individuals.
The Appeals Court ruling means that the original lower court will have to revisit its ruling to correspond to the upper court’s decision.
The appeals court decision reverses the prior ruling and could have repercussions on a controversial North Carolina bill along the same lines.
The board had single unisex bathrooms installed in the school, but Grimm claims they make her feel even more “stigmatized” and are “a daily reminder the school views [her] as ‘different.'” She claims to have suffered “severe and persistent emotional and social harms”.
The student sued the school district previous year, seeking an injunction allowing him to use the boys’ restrooms.
How the Virginia ruling impacts North Carolina remains to be seen.
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The Gloucester County school board voted 6-1 in December 2014 to adopt a restroom and locker room policy that requires boys’ and girls’ facilities to be limited to use to “corresponding biological genders”, but that students with gender identity issues be provided separate, private facilities.
