Visitors enter the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, U.S. October 5, 2016. REUTERS/Gary Cameron Gary Cameron / Reuters
ID: 9880874
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will hear a major case involving the Obama administration’s policies in support of transgender rights, the court announced on Friday.
Gloucester County School Board in Virginia asked the justices to hear the case, which was brought by Gavin Grimm, a transgender male student who is now a senior at the high school in the district.
The school district passed a policy limiting restroom use to students’ biological sex, and Grimm — backed by the ACLU — sued. Although he initially lost at the district court, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals found in Grimm’s favor.
The question in Grimm’s case raises the question whether — as the ACLU and the Obama administration assert — the school’s policy violates Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The Obama administration has interpreted the sex discrimination ban in Title IX to include a ban on anti-transgender discrimination.
The 4th Circuit ruled narrowly, holding that the Obama administration’s guidance supporting transgender coverage was permitted under the regulations implementing Title IX because those regulations were ambiguous on the point. Because they are ambiguous, the Obama administration could adopt the position backing transgender inclusion.
That reasoning is referred to by a prior Supreme Court case name, Auer deference.
The school board asked for the court to reconsider Auer deference in total, as well as determining whether the administration’s position should be allowed under the Auer deference standard — the narrow, 4th Circuit ruling — or, more broadly, that the interpretation is correct — in other words, that sex discrimination includes anti-transgender discrimination.
The Supreme Court on Friday announced that it would not be reconsidering the Auer deference standard, but would only be considering the second and third questions raised by the case.
Over the summer, the Supreme Court issued a stay of the lower courts’ actions, keeping the policy in place while the justices decided whether to take the case.
The justices’ decision to take the case keeps that stay in place until the case is resolved.
Should the case result in a tie, the lower court ruling in Grimm’s favor would stand — but it would set no national precedent for other districts.
