News
Featured Image

July 2, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – The Obama administration's Department of Justice (DoJ) filed a “statement of interest” Monday in support of a Virginia high school sophomore who is seeking to use bathrooms designated for members of the opposite sex.

In June 2015, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed suit against the Gloucester County School Board on behalf of 15-year-old Gavin Grimm, who is biologically female but wants to use male bathrooms and locker rooms.

Grimm claimed that she had used such facilities without incident for seven weeks until December 2014, when the school board enacted a policy requiring “transgender” students to use private restrooms.

Grimm testified in early 2015 that “[n]ow that the board has passed this policy, school no longer feels as safe and welcoming as it did before[.] … Being singled out is a glaring reminder of my differences and causes me significant discomfort every time I have to use the restroom.”

The Obama administration declared in May 2014 that sex discrimination under Title IX applies to those who identify as “transgender.”  The Department of Education followed up last December by ordering federally funded schools to classify students based on “gender identity” rather than biological sex.

Regardless, Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Jeremy Tedesco told LifeSiteNews in June of this year that Grimm's and the ACLU's discrimination claims would not hold water.  Citing a district court case in Pennsylvania, Tedesco noted (emphasis in original) that “[t]he Court … highlighted that Title IX's implementing regulations state that schools do not violate Title IX when they 'provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex.'”

Title IX, part of the U.S. Education Amendments of 1972, is a statute that “prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity.”

“Every court to consider this issue has held that single-sex restrooms and locker room facilities are permitted under Title IX,” Tedesco concluded.

Now, according to the DoJ's “statement of interest” in support of Grimm, filed this week, “[t]he United States has a significant interest in ensuring that all students, including transgender students, have the opportunity to learn in an environment free of sex discrimination and that the proper legal standards are applied to claims under Title IX” (p. 2, all citations omitted).  Per the DoJ, Grimm “is likely to succeed on the merits” of her Title IX claim, and “it is in the public interest to allow [Grimm] … to use the male restrooms at Gloucester High School.”

Regarding the Pennsylvania case mentioned by Tedesco, the DoJ claims that “[t]he district court's reasoning in that case was faulty and should not be followed.”

One Gloucester County School Board member who voted against the December bathroom policy fretted that “federal dollars are at stake.” Her concern was well-founded: five months later, the Obama administration threatened to deny Virginia's Fairfax County School Board $42 million in federal funding if the board refused to change its own bathroom protocols.  The Fairfax board ruled in May – over the strenuous objections of parents in attendance – that “transgender” students could use facilities in accordance with their “gender identity.”

“Although certain parents and community members may object to students sharing a common use restroom with transgender students,” the DoJ declared in its brief for Grimm, “any recognition of this discomfort as a basis for discriminating would undermine the public interest.”