He says, “I can tell you I didn’t set out to make waves, I set out to use the bathroom”. “In a way, it’s analogous to what happened to the same-sex marriage case”. That’s true of the Virginia district that has been discriminating against Grimm, and it is true of any school that chooses to comply with HB2 in North Carolina, which is also in the Fourth Circuit. Last year, a 4th Circuit panel that included two of the three judges in the Grimm case struck down a Virginia ban on gay marriage, and that decision quickly nullified North Carolina’s constitutional amendment that defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Yet he said the appeals court’s decision confirms one their key argument that the North Carolina law violates Title IX.
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Why? Because the Department of Education has been ignoring those words too. The Department of Education released official guidance in 2014 stating that under that law, students must be allowed to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity. It is not apparent to us, however, that the truth of these propositions undermines the conclusion we reach regarding the level of deference due to the departments interpretation of its own regulations..
Judge Paul V. Niemeyer wrote a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part.
But, back on April 5, the ACLU, somehow, correctly reported that Judge Andre M. Davis would rule in their favor, and was even prepared to publicize a comment from him on the decision.
Gail Deady of ACLU Virginia said: “Gavin’s fight has been a beacon of hope in the face of increasingly hostile rhetoric against transgender people in Virginia, and across the nation”. But after some parents complained, Gloucester County School Board prevented Grimm from continuing to use the boys’ restrooms. He said the board likely will follow the advice of the North Carolina School Board Association, which advocates for the state’s 115 school boards and provides policy analysis.
McCrory believes “bathroom and shower facilities in our schools should be kept separate and special accommodations made when needed”, campaign spokesman Ricky Diaz said. The decision prompted swift condemnation from the state’s Republican leaders.
He decried the “radical social reengineering of our society by forcing middle school-aged girls to share school locker rooms with boys”.
A friend of the court brief, filed by Morrisey and his counterparts credited Gloucester County with going further than current law requires in establishing multiple, single-stall unisex bathrooms to accommodate the student in question. The school had decided on a policy [NPR report] that boys and girls bathrooms were to be used only by students of “corresponding biological genders”.
“I think it’s huge, but I don’t think it’s a surprise”, Pate said of the decision. Because the appellate court found the regulation to be ambiguous, it looked to and relied on a 2015 opinion letter from OCR, the agency tasked with enforcing Title IX, to G.G.in which OCR interpreted the Title IX regulation.
The Fourth Circuit has jurisdiction in North Carolina, so the ruling appears to strike down the section of H.B.
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The Macon County Board of Education is in the process of overhauling its policy handbook, and Baldwin said it’s unclear whether the board will add a policy addressing transgender students. Gavin lives his life in accordance with his male gender identity – he legally changed his name, takes hormone therapy and holds a driver’s license that says “M” for male.
