Supreme Court Won't Hear Case on Transgender Bathroom Rights

Politics|The Supreme Court won’t hear a case challenging transgender bathroom rights.

• June 28, 2021, 11:42 a.m. ET

The Supreme Court turned down a request from a Virginia school board to reinstate its policy barring a transgender boy from using the boys’ bathroom.

As is the court’s practice, it gave no reasons for declining to hear the appeal. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. said they would have granted the school board’s petition seeking Supreme Court review.

An appeals court had ruled that the policy violated the Constitution and a federal law by prohibiting the student, Gavin Grimm, from using the same bathrooms as other boys. The school said Mr. Grimm could use a private bathroom.

The Supreme Court had agreed to hear an earlier appeal in the case in but dismissed it in 2017 after the Trump administration changed the federal government’s position on transgender rights. The Biden administration has since adopted policies protecting transgender students.

Last year, the Supreme Court for the first time ruled in favor of transgender rights, saying that a federal employment discrimination law applied to L.G.B.T.Q. workers. But Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, writing for the majority, said the ruling did not address access to restrooms.

“We do not purport to address bathrooms, locker rooms or anything else of the kind,” he wrote.

Mr. Grimm welcomed the Supreme Court’s rejection of the school board’s appeal in the case, Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board, No. 20-1163.

“I am glad that my yearslong fight to have my school see me for who I am is over,” he said. “Being forced to use the nurse’s room, a private bathroom and the girls’ room was humiliating for me, and having to go to out-of-the-way bathrooms severely interfered with my education. Trans youth deserve to use the bathroom in peace without being humiliated and stigmatized by their own school boards and elected officials.”