The Supreme Court declined Monday to take up a major case challenging transgender rights, leaving in place a lower court ruling that allows transgender students at a Virginia high school to use bathrooms and locker rooms of their choice.
Gavin Grimm, a transgender male, sued the Gloucester County School Board for not allowing him to use the boys restroom. Instead, the school offered him a private restroom, but he argued that was stigmatizing.
The case originated in 2015, and the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled in favor of Mr. Grimm.
The lower court reasoned that the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, in which the justices ruled in favor of LGBT employees who had been fired from work, justified striking down the Gloucester County school system’s policy against having transgender students use private bathrooms.
The school board took the case to the high court, challenging the lower court’s ruling by saying the Constitution doesn’t provide for such a sweeping rule and the privacy rights of other students are at stake.
Without comment, the justices declined to hear the case. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. would have moved to take it up, according to the court order.
It would have taken four justices to agree to hear the case to grant review.
