US court hears arguments on transgender student using boys’ bathroom

Transgender student Gavin Grimm will have his case heard by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday in his ongoing legal challenge to be able to use the restroom that corresponds with his gender after Gloucester County High School forced Grimm to use a separate restroom.

Gloucester High School student Gavin Grimm was born female but identifies as male.

Grimm says he is “fighting this fight because no kid should have to think so hard about performing a basic and private function of being alive”. In December 2014, the county school board barred Grimm from using the boys’ restrooms when they adopted a policy that required students to use bathrooms based on their biology, not gender.

Joshua Block, the lead attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which brought the case, told the three-judge panel the policy violated constitutional guarantees of equal protection, and Title IX, the federal law that bars sexual discrimination.

If the court adopts the Department of Education’s interpretation that Title IX applies to transgender students, then students like Grimm should be allowed to use the bathroom that corresponds to their correct gender identity. The U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice have previously ruled that, under Title IX, schools must allow transgender students to use locker rooms, restrooms and changing facilities consistent with their gender identity.

Grimm and his mother weren’t informed of the expressed concerns until a school board held a meeting to directly asses them.

Gavin’s initial attempt at being granted a court injunction to allow his use of the boys’ restroom was denied last September in US District Court. “And of course, in order to equally participate in school, life and society, transgender people, like everyone else, have to use the restrooms”.

“I know that my case may make it possible for other trans kids to go to school free of discrimination in the future”, he said. Block said Grimm “has effectively been banished to an alternative bathroom that continues to stigmatize him everyday”. A ruling is expected several weeks later.