The U.S. Supreme Court will rule on the issue of transgender bathroom rights in the coming year.
The Court announced on Friday it would take up a case involving transgender student Gavin Grimm of Virginia who has been engaged in a legal battle with his school district over being granted permission to use the boy’s restroom.
The case will have implications for President Obama’s guidance to public schools not to discriminate against transgender students, and will also likely impact North Carolina’s anti-trans ‘bathroom bill’ HB 2.
The justices said Friday they will hear the appeal from the Gloucester County school board sometime next year. The high court’s order means that student Gavin Grimm will not be able to use the boys’ bathroom in the meantime.
School districts across the country are split on how to accommodate transgender students in the face of conflicting guidance from courts, the federal government and, in some cases, state legislatures that have passed laws requiring people to use public restrooms that coincide with the sex on their birth certificates.
The justices accepted a petition from Gloucester County, Va. On a 5 to 3 vote in August, they said the school board did not have to comply with a lower court’s order that 17-year-old student Gavin Grimm, who was born female but identifies as male, should be allowed to use the boys’ bathroom during his senior year of high school.
