On June 28, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Virginia school board’s appeal to reinstate its transgender bathroom ban. The high court’s decision not to grant certiorari, hands a victory to a former high school student who fought in court for six years to overturn the ban.
Student Gavin Grimm (“G.G.”), who was born female but identifies as male, sued the School Board of Gloucester County, Virginia alleging that its policy — requiring that students use bathrooms corresponding with their “biological sex” — is discriminatory and violates his civil rights.
In April 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit sided with Grimm, ruling that his case could move forward. It deferred to the Obama administration’s position that Title IX, the federal law banning sex discrimination in public schools, protects the rights of transgender students to use school bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity.
A month after the Fourth Circuit’s decision, the U.S. Department of Education issued that same guidance to the rest of the nation’s public schools. The move sparked a backlash and a lawsuit by several states, including South Carolina, which argued that the Obama administration had overstepped its authority. The Supreme Court was scheduled to hear Grimm’s case at an earlier stage of the litigation in 2017, but the case was sent back to the lower courts after the Trump administration withdrew the government’s support for Grimm’s claims.
After four years of litigation—including a trip to the Supreme Court and back– the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled in favor of Gavin on all his claims. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the ruling in favor of Gavin on August 26, 2020. Because the U.S. Supreme Court has chosen not to take up the case, this effectively ends the litigation. The Court of Appeals’ previous holding that “Title IX and the Constitution protect transgender students from being excluded from the common restrooms that align with their gender identity,” is the law applicable to schools, colleges and universities. The Department of Justice and Department of Education, through their recent actions in cases involving transgender youth, have affirmed these court rulings.
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