Supreme Court Rejects VA School System's Anti-Transgender Case

VIRGINIA — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a Virginia school board’s appeal to reinstate its transgender bathroom ban, delivering a victory to a former high school student who fought in court for six years to overturn the ban.

The high court’s ruling in favor of the former student comes as an anti-transgender campaign gains momentum in Northern Virginia. In one jurisdiction, conservative groups are rallying around a school teacher who vowed not to refer to students by their preferred names and pronouns.

Unrest broke out at last Tuesday's Loudoun County School Board meeting as residents who came out to protest critical race theory and the district's proposed policies on transgender students became unruly, leading to two arrests.

In the Supreme Court case, Gavin Grimm was a 15-year-old student at Gloucester High School when he was banned from using the boys bathroom. Gloucester County is located in the Middle Peninsula area of Virginia.

The Gloucester County School Board’s policy required Grimm to use restrooms that corresponded with his biological sex — female — or private bathrooms. Grimm filed a federal lawsuit that wound its way through the courts for six years.

Grimm said that being forced to use the nurse’s room, a private bathroom and the girl’s restroom was humiliating and severely interfered with his education.

In Monday's decision, the Supreme Court left in place lower court rulings that found the policy unconstitutional. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas voted to hear the board’s appeal.

In its petition asking the Supreme Court to hear the case, the school board argued that its bathroom policy poses a “pressing federal question of national importance.”

The Gloucester County School Board argued that federal laws protect against discrimination based on sex, not gender identity. Because Grimm had not undergone sex-reassignment surgery and still had female genitalia, the board’s position has been that he remained anatomically a female.

A U.S. District Court judge and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals both ruled that the board’s policy violated Title IX, a federal civil rights law barring sex-based discrimination in any school that receives federal money. The courts also found it violated the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause by prohibiting Grimm from using the same restrooms as other boys and forcing him to use separate restrooms.

In Loudoun County, conservative parents and groups have rallied around Tanner Cross, a teacher at Leesburg Elementary School who has argued that he could not recognize transgender youth because it goes against his religious beliefs.

RELATED: Protests Against Trans Students, Equity Derail School Meeting

At a Loudoun County School Board meeting on May 25, Cross said during the public comment period that he would not follow the proposed policy. "I will not affirm that a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa. It's against my religion, it's lying to a child, it's abuse to a child, and it's sinning against our God," he said during the meeting's public comment time.

Cross was suspended after expressing his resistance to the school system's proposed policy toward transgender students but was reinstated due to a temporary injunction from a Loudoun County court.

Last week, the Loudoun County School Board filed an appeal in the Virginia Supreme Court challenging the circuit court judge’s decision to grant an injunction requiring the reinstatement of Cross.

Research has shown that allowing children to socially transition, by using preferred names and pronouns, improves their mental health outcomes. A study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry showed that transgender children who are allowed to socially transition had similar levels of depression and self-worth as their cisgender peers.

At last week’s school board meeting, former Virginia state Sen. Dick Black said during the public comment period that "it's absurd and immoral for teachers to call boys girls and girls boys."

After Black's comment, the board quickly voted to end the public comment section early. The meeting's attendees responded by booing, and one man could be seen showing his middle fingers to school board members.

This story includes reporting from the Associated Press.

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