SCOTUS rebuffs bathroom appeal in transgender case

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a major transgender rights case, leaving in place a lower court's ruling that a Virginia public school board acted unlawfully in preventing a transgender student from using a bathroom at his high school that corresponded with his gender identity.

This report produced by Chris Dignam.

GAVIN GRIMM ON FEB 22, 2017: "No matter what happens, no one - not even the government - can defeat a community so full of life, color, diversity and, most importantly, love." Six and a half years after transgender activist Gavin Grimm was barred from using the boys' bathroom at his high school, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left in place a lower court's ruling that a Virginia public school board acted unlawfully when it refused to allow him to use the restroom that corresponded with his gender identity.

The Supreme Court's decision not to hear the Gloucester County School Board's appeal of that 2020 ruling marks a major victory for Grimm, who sued the school board in 2015.

In a Twitter post, Grimm said "...at 16, myself with the [ACLU] filed suit in response to that discrimination.

Twice since I have enjoyed victories in court, and now it's over.

We won." Grimm, now 22, graduated from Gloucester High School in 2017.

Grimm was born female but began identifying as male after his freshman year.

With the school's permission, Grimm used the boys' bathroom for about seven weeks without incident.

But after complaints from parents, the county school board adopted a new policy in December 2014 that required students to use the bathroom that corresponded with their gender at birth.

A judge on the Richmond-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals said the school board's actions constituted "a special kind of discrimination against a child that he will no doubt carry with him for life." The Supreme Court previously took up the case in 2016 but did not issue a ruling and sent it back to lower courts.

The brief court order on Monday declining to hear the appeal noted that conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would have taken up the case.