Supreme Court To Hear Transgender Student Case Next Month
- By
- Carlos Santoscoy
- | February 04, 2017
The US Supreme Court on Friday announced that it would hear arguments in a case involving a transgender student on March 28.
The high court agreed to hear the case last year.
Gavin Grimm, a senior at Gloucester High School in Virginia, is challenging his school district's policy that prohibits transgender students such as himself from using the bathroom of their choice. Grimm's ACLU lawyers have argued that the policy violates federal civil rights laws, specifically Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Grimm, who came out in his sophomore year. The school board appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which stayed the lower court's order.
The Obama administration interpreted Title IX to include transgender people, but it remains to be seen how the new administration under President Donald Trump will respond. During the presidential campaign, Trump supported North Carolina's House Bill 2, the first and only state law that prohibits transgender people from using the bathroom of their choice, and said that he would do away with “political correctness” in the military as it relates to transgender troops serving openly.
(Related: Gavin Grimm: Transgender teen at center of bathroom debate: I'm not dangerous.)