Federal Judge Declines To Dismiss Transgender Teen Gavin Grimm's Title IX Case

A federal judge on Tuesday declined to dismiss a transgender teen's lawsuit challenging his Virginia school district's bathroom policy.

Gavin Grimm is the 18-year-old teen at the center of the transgender bathroom debate. In his lawsuit, Grimm claims that excluding him from using the bathroom of his choice violates Title IX and the U.S. Constitution.

In March, the Supreme Court, which was scheduled to hear Grimm's case, announced it would not consider the case and sent it back to a lower court. Grimm's case rested heavily on guidance issued last year by the Department of Education, which stated that transgender students were protected under Title IX. The Trump administration revoked the Obama-era guidance, saying that the issue was better left up to the states. The reversal prompted the high court to act.

In her 31-page ruling, Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia declined a motion from the Gloucester County School Board to dismiss the lawsuit. She also ordered parties to participate in a settlement conference.

“The Board's argument that the policy did not discriminate against any one class of students is resoundingly unpersuasive,” Allen wrote. “Accordingly, the Court declines to dismiss his Equal Protection Claim.”

Grimm is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of Virginia.

“The district court’s ruling vindicates what Gavin has been saying from the beginning,” Joshua Block, senior staff attorney with the ACLU LGBT & HIV Project, said in a statement. “Federal law protects Gavin and other students who are transgender from being stigmatized and excluded from using the same common restrooms that other boys and girls use. These sorts of discriminatory policies do nothing to protect privacy and only serve to harm and humiliate transgender students.”

Grimm, who graduated high school this year, said that he was continuing the fight for transgender students who would come after him.

“I feel an incredible sense of relief. After fighting this policy since I was 15 years old, I finally have a court decision saying that what the Gloucester County School Board did to me was wrong and it was against the law. I was determined not to give up because I didn’t want any other student to have to suffer the same experience that I had to go through,” Grimm said in a statement released by the ACLU.