In the news, a victory for trans kids....
Supreme Court won’t hear dispute over bathrooms for transgender students
Excerpted...
The
Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up the issue of whether the nation's schools must allow students to use the bathroom that match their gender identities.
The court declined, without comment, to hear the case of
Gavin Grimm, who has been at the center of a long legal battle with the school board in Gloucester County, Virginia. Grimm was born female but identified as male after his freshman year in high school, legally changing his name and beginning hormone therapy.
The principal at first gave him permission to use the boys' bathroom, but the school board later adopted a policy saying restrooms were "limited to the corresponding biological genders."
"For school officials, as for parents, the question how best to respond to a teenager who identifies with the opposite biological sex is often excruciatingly difficult," lawyers for the school district told the Supreme Court. But the privacy rights of millions of students are at risk if their transgender classmates are allowed to use bathrooms matching their gender identities, they said.
Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, representing Grimm, told the court that treating him differently by requiring him to use separate single-stall bathrooms singled him out "and stigmatized him as unfit to use the same restroom as his peers."
They said there was no need for the Supreme Court to take up the appeal, because the lower courts that have considered the issue reached the same conclusion — that treating transgender students differently violates a federal law, known as Title IX, that bans sex discrimination in school programs.
Monday's order denying review in the case means Grimm's victory in the appeals court remains intact.
The American Civil Liberties Union celebrated the action.