Power

Virginia School Board Wants Supreme Court in Fight Over Transgender Student Bathroom Access

The Gloucester County School Board wants the Supreme Court to decide whether federal law requires schools to let transgender students access facilities such as bathrooms that conform to their gender identity.

Gavin Grimm, a Gloucester County student, challenged his school’s policy of separating transgender students from their peers in restrooms and mandating that students use bathrooms consistent with their "biological sex" rather than their gender identity. WAVY TV 10 / YouTube

A Virginia school board will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to step into the fight over bathroom access for transgender students in the first real legal test of the Obama administration’s agency actions on the issue.

The case involves Gavin Grimm, a Gloucester County student who, in 2015, challenged his school’s policy of separating transgender students from their peers in restrooms and mandating that students use bathrooms consistent with their “biological sex” rather than their gender identity.

As previously reported by Rewire:

Grimm’s attorneys at the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the restroom policy, which effectively expels transgender students from communal restrooms and requires them to use “alternative … private” restroom facilities, is unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment and violates Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendments of 1972, a federal law prohibiting sex discrimination at schools that receive federal funding.

The school board defended its policy, arguing that it was consistent with federal law and that it protected the privacy rights of other students at Grimm’s school.

Grimm’s attorneys had asked a federal court for an injunction blocking the policy. A lower court initially sided with the school board; Grimm’s attorneys appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which reversed the lower court and ruled that Grimm’s lawsuit against his school could proceed.

On Tuesday the Fourth Circuit agreed to put its decision on hold while the school board filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to step in. The board is arguing that the Obama administration has gone too far on transgender rights, beginning in 2012, when it issued an initial agency opinion that refusing transgender students access to the bathrooms consistent with their gender identity violated Title IX.

In October 2015 the administration took that opinion one step further and filed a friend of the court brief on Grimm’s behalf with the Fourth Circuit, arguing it was the administration’s position that the school board’s policy specifically violated federal law. Then, in May this year, the administration expanded that opinion into a directive. Though it still didn’t have the force of law, the directive put all schools receiving federal funding on notice: Should they deny transgender students access to facilities that conform to students’ gender identity, they would be in violation of federal law and subject to lawsuits. The Fourth Circuit relied heavily on this guidance in siding with Grimm earlier this year.

It is not clear whether the Roberts Court will step into the issue of transgender students’ rights at this time. So far, no other federal appeals court has weighed in on the issue.

Meanwhile, 22 states have filed a lawsuit challenging the Obama administration’s 2016 directive, arguing that the administration overstepped its authority. That lawsuit is also in its early stages.

Both Grimm’s lawsuit and the states’ lawsuit in response suggest the issue of transgender rights and sex discrimination will end up before the Roberts Court at some point.