Supreme Court sidelines case against bathroom access for transgender students

The Supreme Court brushed aside a lawsuit Monday aimed at barring transgender students from bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity.

The high court has decided not to hear the case aimed at ending an Oregon school district’s policy of allowing transgender students to use facilities that match their gender identity.

The Supreme Court’s rejection of the appeal is a win for civil rights groups that worried that the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, which cemented a conservative majority on the bench, would “threaten LGBTQ equality.”

“The Supreme Court has once again said that transgender youth are not a threat to other students,” said Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice with the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project.

During her confirmation hearing, Democratic lawmakers and advocates criticized Barrett for referring to sexual orientation as a “preference,” and she later apologized. Barrett also insisted that she has “never discriminated on the basis of sexual preference” although a New York Times profile found she had served as a board member at an Indiana private school that barred admission to students of unmarried parents when same-sex marriage was not yet legalized in the state.

Key context: Parents for Privacy, a group of students and parents in the Dallas School District in northeastern Oregon, argued that the district’s “Student Safety Plan” violates the privacy rights of cisgender parents and students, as well as Title IX.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the lawsuit after it found the district’s plan “sought to avoid discrimination and ensure the safety and well-being of transgender students” and “did not violate Title IX.” The court also said there “is no Fourteenth Amendment fundamental privacy right to avoid all risk of intimate exposure to or by a transgender person who was assigned the opposite biological sex at birth.”

The appeals court ruling upheld a lower court decision that found that “the school district policy didn’t violate the privacy rights of other students who object to sharing the spaces.” The court found that denying transgender students the ability to use the same facilities as other students would amount to illegal discrimination.

What’s next: As the ACLU anticipates state legislative sessions “that will likely continue the attacks on trans youth,” Strangio said, the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case sends “an important and powerful message to trans and non-binary youth that they deserve to share space with and enjoy the benefits of school alongside their non-transgender peers.”

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/07/supreme-court-bathrooms-transgender-students-443434
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Bianca Quilantan

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