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A potentially precedent-shattering case involving transgender students and school bathrooms has been sent back to a lower court after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to decide the case.
BREAKING: Supreme Court won't hear transgender bathroom case after Trump policy shift https://t.co/YWtqs9rKKr pic.twitter.com/WK6JKPA0kd
— The Hill (@thehill) March 6, 2017
Instead of hearing arguments later this month as scheduled, a lower court in Virginia will hear student Gavin Grimm’s case against the Gloucester County School Board.
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The case was significant because it is the first in which the Obama-era departments of Education and Justice insisted that Title IX, which bans discrimination on the grounds of gender, applies to the issue of transgenders and bathrooms.
One of the federal appeals courts that had ruled against the school had used that guidance in determining its ruling, having interpreted what was called a guidance letter as, in effect, a rule protecting transgender students.
The position has changed under the Trump administration, which last month annulled a federal letter to schools issued during the Obama administration that advised schools to allow students to use the bathroom of their chosen gender.
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Grimm, who was born female but identifies as male, had sued in opposition to the Gloucester County School Board’s policy that required students to use bathrooms conforming to the gender they had when they were born or use a private single-stall bathroom.
The school had allowed him to use the boys’ bathrooms at one point, but then changed its policy.
Grimm had claimed he was the victim of discrimination. A federal judge initially supported the school, but when the case began its series of appeals, the federal appellate court sided with Grimm.
Circuit Court Judge Paul Niemeyer, who dissented when the Appeals Court ruled in Grimm’s favor, has insisted the ruling that allowed Grimm to use the boys’ restroom was wrong.
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“The majority’s opinion, for the first time ever, holds that a public high school may not provide separate restrooms and locker rooms on the basis of biological sex,” he wrote.
“Rather, it must now allow a biological male student who identifies as female to use the girls’ restrooms and locker rooms and, likewise, must allow a biological female student who identifies as male to use the boys’ restrooms and locker rooms. This holding completely tramples on all universally accepted protections of privacy and safety that are based on the anatomical differences between the sexes,” he wrote.
“This unprecedented holding overrules custom, culture, and the very demands inherent in human nature for privacy and safety, which the separation of such facilities is designed to protect,” Niemeyer continued. “More particularly, it also misconstrues the clear language of Title IX and its regulations …”
