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Having blocked the implementation of a lower court’s ruling compelling a Virginia school to allow a transgender student to access the bathroom of his choice, the Supreme Court on Friday announced it will review the case.
In August, by a 5-3 vote, the justices put on hold a groundbreaking court ruling requiring the Gloucester County School Board to let student Gavin Grimm use the boys’ bathroom. Grimm was born as a female but identifies as a male.
In taking up the case, the Supreme Court said it would review whether the Obama administration’s interpretation of federal civil rights law is correct.
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The case is significant because it is the first in which the 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.
The federal agencies said students must be allowed to use restrooms they believe match their gender identity, a stand later emphasized in an order sent out to public schools by the Obama administration.
In the 5-3 decision to stay the lower court order, Justice Stephen G. Breyer joined the court’s four conservative justices in granting the stay until the court could fully consider the case later this year. He has said that his vote to delay implementation of a lower court ruling does not mean he would vote that way when the case is heard.
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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.
“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 …”
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The school board is hoping the policy a lower court rejected will be upheld by the Supreme Court.
“We are grateful that the Supreme Court has granted the school board’s petition in this difficult case,” school board chairman Troy Andersen said Friday in a statement.
“The board looks forward to explaining to the court that its restroom and locker room policy carefully balances the interests of all students and parents in the Gloucester County school system.”
