News
Featured Image
U.S. Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett Flickr

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 28, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday it will not consider an appeal of a lower-court ruling that biologically-female former student Gavin Grimm had a constitutional right to use male restrooms at Virginia’s Gloucester High School, leaving in place a victory for “transgender” redefinition of federal nondiscrimination rules.

Grimm, who claims to be male, is a graduate of Gloucester who rose to prominence after challenging the school’s restroom policy starting in 2014. The Gloucester County School Board originally attempted to accommodate her request by letting her use a private restroom, but Grimm demanded access to the same restrooms used by male students.

District Judge Arenda Wright Allen sided with Grimm in May 2018, ruling that the policy “classified Mr. [sic] Grimm differently on the basis of his (sic) transgender status and, accordingly, subjected him (sic) to sex stereotyping.” The board appealed, but Allen again rejected the school board’s argument that gender is a physical reality rather than a social construct. The board appealed the case to the Fourth Circuit in September 2019, a panel of which sided with Grimm last April.

In this Monday’s order list, the nation’s highest court confirmed that it is denying an appeal to review the Fourth Circuit’s argument, with only conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissenting.

CNN noted that in practice, the decision means that, while binding nationwide precedent on the issue has not been set, “public school students in the mid-Atlantic states covered by the 4th Circuit, as well as states governed by the 7th Circuit and the 11th Circuit, can use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity.”

“I am glad that my years-long fight to have my school see me for who I am is over,” said Grimm, who has long since graduated and would not have been affected by an outcome in either election. “Being forced to use the nurse's room, a private bathroom, and the girl's room was humiliating for me, and having to go to out-of-the-way bathrooms severely interfered with my education.”

Schools that haven’t yet surrendered to transgender activists generally accommodate gender-confused students by allowing them to use private staff restrooms or other single-occupancy facilities. Conservatives argue that forcing children and teens to share intimate facilities with members of the opposite sex violates their privacy rights, subjects them to needless emotional stress, and gives potential male predators a viable pretext to enter female bathrooms or lockers.

This case, the Gloucester school board argued, would have been an “ideal, timely vehicle” for resolving “the question of how best to respond to a teenager who identifies with the opposite biological sex,” which “is often excruciatingly difficult” because “the teenager deserves and needs everyone’s compassion,” while at the same time “allowing the teenager to use multi-user restrooms, locker rooms and shower facilities reserved for the opposite sex raises what this Court has acknowledged to be serious concerns about bodily privacy.”

The case also gives conservatives another alarming data point for the jurisprudence of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett; none of former President Donald Trump’s three appointees to the Supreme Court are listed as voting to hear the case. Only four justices are needed to grant a writ of certiorari.