Supreme Court Won’t Hear Major Case on Transgender Rights -<br />By ADAM LIPTAKMARCH 6, 2017<br />WASHINGTON — Prompted by the Trump administration’s reversal of the federal government’s position on transgender rights, the Supreme Court announced on Monday<br />that it would not decide whether a transgender boy in Virginia could use the boys’ bathroom at his high school.<br />A 1975 regulation adopted under Title IX allowed schools to provide “separate toilet, locker rooms and shower facilities on the basis of sex.” The Fourth Circuit said<br />that the rule was ambiguous and that the Education Department’s interpretation of it was entitled to “controlling weight.”<br />Both sides had hoped the Supreme Court would decide the case, Gloucester County School Board v.<br />16-273, even after the Trump administration withdrew its guidance on the meaning of the regulation.<br />The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Mr. Grimm, told the justices<br />that requiring Mr. Grimm to use a private bathroom had been humiliating and had, quoting him, “turned him into ‘a public spectacle’ before the entire community, ‘like a walking freak show.’”<br />After Mr. Grimm challenged the school board’s bathroom policy in court in 2015, a divided Fourth Circuit panel ruled the policy unlawful.
