Education

High School Girl Who Demands To Use Boys’ Bathroom Wins Federal Appeals Court Decision

Gavin Grimm YouTube screenshot/WAVY TV 10

Font Size:

A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that a school district in rural, coastal Virginia cannot ban a female student from boys’ bathrooms and locker rooms because the Obama administration’s interpretation of Title IX allows students who call themselves transgender to choose their own bathrooms.

The student at the center of the lawsuit, Gavin Grimm, attends Gloucester High School in Gloucester, Va.

The reason school officials prevented Grimm from using facilities reserved for boys on campus is because Grimm was born a girl and by all accounts remains a girl.

In December 2014, by a 6-to-1 vote, the Gloucester school board refused to allow Grimm to use boys’ bathrooms and locker rooms. The board had received complaints from dozens of irate parents because the then-16-year-old female student had been using the boys’ facilities for seven weeks or so.

School board chairman George (Randy) Burak observed at the time that other students use bathrooms and locker rooms in addition to Grimm.

“This issue is not about one student. Rather, it’s about all our students,” Burak said at the time, according to area CBS affiliate WTKR.

To placate Grimm, the school district paid to build a number of unisex, single-person bathrooms for all students — including Grimm — to use.

Grimm was unsatisfied. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, she and her parents sued the school district under Title IX, a comprehensive 1972 federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. (RELATED: ACLU Sues To Allow Girl To Use Boys Bathroom, Locker Rooms At Public High School)

“I just want to use the restroom in peace,” Grimm declared in a June 2015 ACLU press release obtained by the Washington Blade, America’s oldest gay-oriented newspaper. “Since the school board passed this policy I feel singled out and humiliated every time I need to use the restroom.”

A U.S. District Court judge ruled against Grimm in the fall.

“Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex and not on the basis of other concepts such as gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation,” the judge ruled, according to Richmond, Va. CBS affiliate WTVR.

However, a three-judge Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled on Tuesday that the district court failed to obey the U.S. Department of Education interpretation of Title IX. President Barack Obama’s Education Department has determined that Title IX requires that transgender students must be able to use the bathroom they feel like their gender identity best matches. (RELATED: TWO PEOPLE Have Filed OVER 1,700 Sex Discrimination Complaints With Dept. Of Education)

“Because we conclude the district court did not accord appropriate deference to the relevant Department of Education regulations, we reverse its dismissal of G.G.’s Title IX claim,” Judge Henry Floyd, an Obama appointee, wrote in the appellate opinion.

The court held that the lower court judge “used the wrong evidentiary standard” in issuing a ruling in favor the Gloucester school board. The court remanded the case to the district court “for consideration under the correct standard.”

Grimm, the student, was elated.

“Today’s decision gives me hope that my fight will help other kids avoid discriminatory treatment at school,” she said in an ACLU statement obtained by WTVR.

At least one physician has diagnosed Grimm with gender dysphoria, which means that Grimm insists she is actually a boy even though she was born with — and lived her life with — female reproductive organs.

In 2015, Joshua Block, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and HIV Project, described the Gloucester school board policy that girls and boys should use separate bathrooms and locker rooms as “deeply stigmatizing and needlessly cruel.”

“Any student — transgender or not — should be free to use single-stall restrooms if they want extra privacy,” Block told the Daily Press of Newport News.

The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, a group which advocates for gay and transgender students, applauded Tuesday’s appeals court ruling.

“Today’s monumental decision reinforces the Obama Administration’s position that Title IX protects transgender and gender nonconforming public school students from discrimination,” Nathan Smith, the group’s public policy director, said in a statement sent to The Daily Caller.

“In light of the court’s decision, it is imperative that” Obama’s Department of Education “issue clear guidance to school districts across the United States on serving transgender and gender nonconforming students under Title IX,” Smith added.

John Banzhaf, a famed public interest law professor at the George Washington University Law School, notes that states legislatures can pass laws which require students to use taxpayer-funded public school bathrooms which match their actual anatomy.

“While federal law may override state statutes in many areas of law, courts have repeatedly held that, for this to happen, the intent of Congress to preempt state law must be very clear, either in the text of the statute itself, or by unambiguous legislative history.  Here there is neither,” Banzhaf told The Daily Caller in a statement.

“In this case, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit based its ruling not upon any such language in Title IX (which expressly permits restrooms segregated by gender), nor even upon a regulation which had been adopted in according with the normal procedure which permits public comments before it was issued,” Banzhaf explained. “Rather, it said that the lower court, which had rebuffed the student’s complaint, did not give sufficient deference to a so-called guidance document issued by the Department of Education; essentially an opinion on what a regulation means.”

Banzhaf’s radical solution — instead of unisex, single-person bathrooms — is the option of an all-gender bathroom with a bunch of stalls open to everyone.

Follow Eric on TwitterLike Eric on Facebook. Send education-related story tips to erico@dailycaller.com.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel