Supreme Court Sends Back Virginia Transgender Bathroom Case to Lower Court
Decision comes after Trump withdrew an Obama directive that allowed transgender teens to use whichever bathroom they want.
The Supreme Court has chosen to send a Virginia transgender student’s bathroom case back to the lower court after President Donald Trump’s administration decided to do away with a directive from former President Barack Obama that stated students in schools can use which bathroom they want.
The court should have heard the case later this month. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit had decided to allow transgender teen Gavin Grimm to use the bathroom of her choice.
From The Hill:
The court asked both parties in the case to submit their views on how the case should proceed since the lower court had deferred to the Obama-era guidance.
Both sides had said the justices should hear the case as planned.
The lower court “had relied on the federal government’s guidance” on the issue.
Grimm is the center of the case. Born a female, she identifies as a male. She even changed her name and received a new birth certificate that identifies her as a female. In 2014, the Gloucester County School Board ruled that students must use the bathroom of their birth sex. In other words, Grimm should use the female bathroom.
Grimm insisted that the school board’s decision discriminated her “in violation of Title IX anti-discrimination laws.”
Then the Fourth Circuit decided that “the Obama administration guidance should be given deference because federal anti-discrimination laws are ambiguous when it comes to ‘sex.'”
This probably means Grimm will have to use the female bathroom until she graduates:
For Grimm, the order means that he probably will graduate with the issue unresolved and his ability to use the boys’ bathroom blocked by a policy of the Gloucester County school board. Although he won a court order allowing him to use the boys’ bathroom, the Supreme Court put it on hold last August, before the school year began.
“This is disappointing for trans kids across the country and for Gavin, who are now going to be held in limbo for another year or two,” said Joshua Block, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represents Grimm. “But Title IX means the same thing today as it meant yesterday. Lower courts already have held that it protects trans kids.”
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Comments
I love it when I see that LI authors are willing to call a spade a spade.
But what weight class will she wrestle in?
“But Title IX means the same thing today as it meant yesterday.”
But apparently a completely different thing than it meant 5 years ago, or when it was passed.
Exactly. Mr Block’s entire premise is that Title 9 means something different now than it meant when it was passed in the ’70s. So why can’t it change meanings again with a new administration?
Born a female, she identifies as a male. She even changed her name and received a new birth certificate that identifies her as a female.
Why would she need a new ‘female’ birth certificate? That makes absolutely no sense. But, none of this transgender bathroom stuff does.
It’d be easier if all public bathrooms had stalls with both a toilet & urinal with a locking door, like a porta potty, only indoors.
When I first read the comment about the birth certificate, I thought it was just relating to the name change being put on the certificate but with the gender remaining as female. But, go back to the WP article and it does say that the birth certificate was changed to male.
Concerning the bathroom stalls, I would recommend floor to ceiling walls to avoid any chance of the camera snoops.
Hmmmm.
Could she have her birthplace changed to Hawaii too?
Comment of the day!
It’s an obvious typo. The new certificate “corrects the error in assignment made at birth” and says she’s male. Which means that in NC she would indeed be allowed and required to use the male facilities. But VA doesn’t have a law like that.
Somewhere the late Charles Durning is singing – “I Love to do the Sidestep” from Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and dedicating it to the SCOTUS.
He could turn so fast his hat stayed where he had been. LOL!!
LOL!!
I have a theory that boys are born with peckers, but I will concede that liberals are born with little peckers. Geez, kiddo! Go to Target if you want to go with the fellas. smh
Sorry kid, you are f’d in the head; maybe it is your parents’ fault and they are f’d in the head too. I refuse to play in someone’s delusion. Sheesh, talk about an Anti-Science crowd that is pushing this crap.
Liberals are delusional. Believing yourself to be a male, when you are biologically a female, has long been regarded, by the mental health community, as being delusional. It is possible to physically change your sex, through surgery, to reflect your mental belief as to your gender. Making such a change would change your physical gender, both physically and legally. However, from a legal standpoint, simply believing yourself to be of the opposite gender, in opposition to physical fact, is delusion. It would be the same as treating a human being as an animal simply because they said that they were not human but a pig.
Please, put some semblance of sanity BACK into jurisprudence.
It is not physically possible to change your sex through surgery. It’s possible to change some outward appearances. Give a man an innie, a woman an outie. But the built up parts are going to be non-functional for the purpose of reproduction. Which is why they exist.
It’s one of the reasons Johns Hopkins no longer does sexual reassignment surgery.
Many people’s parts are non-functional for the purpose of reproduction. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist. So what’s the difference between their parts and those created in surgery?
DNA. The code that determines who we are.
DNA influences who we are, but doesn’t determine it. Which genes express themselves when is a complex subject. But there are certainly people with XY chromosomes who are born with unambiguously female anatomy. How are they different from XY people who are born with male anatomy but then have it surgically changed?
Testosterone. Estrogen. Both produced naturally in original body parts, production not added by surgery.
But then, if you’re actually making the argument that the operation actually makes one sex into another, you’re a fool, and there’s no point in further engaging with you.
In the case of male to female there are absent parts (the uterus and ovaries).
In the case of female to male there are present parts (the uterus and ovaries) that shouldn’t be there and could never transmit sperm to an XX female.
I know you know this, but there is a distinct argument between a non-functional part that at least has the features present and forms the proper pathing compared to missing or altogether misappropriated parts for the purpose of reproduction.
How is that distinction significant? What’s the difference between someone with non-functioning female genitalia who got that way naturally and someone who did so by way of surgery?
Will ‘His’ doctor be sanctioned for being mean and bigoted for suggesting treatment for ‘His’ ovarian cancer should that situation arise?
On the contrary, transgender activists expect doctors to ask this of male patients, since in the new reality some men have ovaries, and can give birth. They also expect doctors to ask female patients about testicular cancer, just in case they happen to be the kind of women who’ve got testicles. I don’t know whether doctors should also test patients for FIV just in case they happen to be cats; one should never assume, after all…
The saying that comes to mind is that “it’s easier to make a hole than a pole.”
No doubt they could fix “him” up with some sort of prosthesis, a simulacrum that can, in limited and artificial ways, be made to mimic the real thing. And, indeed, it’s at least understandable that a man who’s been grievously injured might opt to be fitted with such a thing.
Nonetheless, it’s difficult to imagine that such a thing would or could somehow produce an actual, happily functioning male from a female. And who knows, perhaps a few costly malpractice cases brought by those who “transitioned” only to find themselves worse off than before will dry up the supply of medical doctors willing to be involved in such medically dubious practices?
For legal purposes, changing the visible primary and secondary sexual characteristics of an individual is EXACTLY how the legal gender of an individual is changed. That, coupled with self identification, has been the standard for determining the sex of an individual for thousands of years.
This whole transgender movement has NOTHING to do with recognizing a person’s self identified gender. It is all about destroying the societal structure which exists in the US today. It is designed to eliminate standards which have proven beneficial to the operation of US and Western society for thousands of years.
This is a false premise that uses false language and ought to be dismissed from the courts docket.
Why? There is no such thing as ‘transgendered’ people. The very word is the definition of anti-science; particularly biology, heredity, gynecology, and endocrinology.
Everyone is created in the image of God and is born either male or female. This is the most basic definition of heterosexual. There is no 3rd category of human being. How one chooses to behave as they mature is another discussion altogether.
Those who insist differently suffer from neurosis – or are liars – and seek to impose this gender dysphoria delusion upon the other 99.95% of society who do not suffer from this malady. They need prayers and mental health counseling – not enabling. Stop using the deluded language of ‘transgendered’ which only serves to propagate this lie about a 3rd category of human being.
locomotivebreath1901: Everyone is created in the image of God and is born either male or female.
That is not correct. About one in a thousand human births involve ambiguous genitalia. That means most small towns have a number of intersex individuals, and large cities may have thousands. This doesn’t even include all the other manifestations of sex and gender that humans sometimes exhibit.
Intersex is not transgender. The former is physiologic and the later psychologic. The medical determination of sex at birth in intersex cases is very important and corrective remedies taken in the neonatal period. There are rarer cases such as testicular feminization where chromosomes are XY but complete lack of any testosterone receptors produces a 100% response only to estrogen in the body. The rarest of rare cases does not justify turning the world on its head for a few people with mental issues.
alaskabob: Intersex is not transgender.
The claim was that people are always born sexually binary, and that is not the case.
alaskabob: The medical determination of sex at birth in intersex cases is very important and corrective remedies taken in the neonatal period.
That’s right, and sometimes that means the physical and psychological aspects of the person are then in contradiction.
There are many different ways that the physical and psychological aspects of a person interact to create the whole human being. Homosexuality, transgenderism, transvestism, are all different manifestations of the human condition.
Could also add pedophilia, sado-masochism, psychopathic behavior… just a melting pot of warm fuzzy things that make up the human condition. Many are more than frowned upon. But… who are we to judge what is acceptable behavior… right?
alaskabob: Could also add pedophilia, sado-masochism, psychopathic behavior … who are we to judge what is acceptable behavior…
When it results in harm to others, then society does have a say in the matter.
Zachriel is of course correct that locomotivebreath1901 wrote in ignorance. There are and have always been many people whose sex is ambiguous or undetermined. Nowadays they are usually assigned a sex at birth, with every possible effort made to get it right, but sometimes it later becomes apparent that the assignment was incorrect and should be changed. I don’t think anyone has a problem with that.
The transgender argument is that this happens more often than we realise. Sometimes, they say, a child is born with genitals that appear to be unambiguously male or female, so that the “assignment decision” takes no thought at all, and yet it is wrong. Despite possessing the anatomically perfect genitals of one sex, the person is actually of the opposite sex. When the mistake is discovered it should be corrected, just as it would be for someone with ambiguous genitals. Unfortunately, however, the only way to tell this is from the inside, so everyone else has to take the person’s word for it.
I don’t buy it. If the genitals are clear, then that is what the person is. If there’s a mismatch between how they look and how they feel, why should feelings take precedence over anatomy? Even if they should, nobody outside that person’s head has any evidence of this mismatch. Why should we defer to their word that it exists, and that their alleged feelings should take precedence over their objectively verifiable anatomy?
Of course in most of our interactions with each other we don’t care what sex someone is, so we naturally take people’s word for it. If someone presents themselves as male we will generally assume that they are, because it costs us nothing to do so. Even if we happen to know that the person used to present themselves as female, and we believe their former presentation was the one that matches their anatomy, it would be rude to contradict their new presentation, and for most purposes it costs us nothing to go along with it. Transgendered people usually take offense when addressed by the pronouns they have rejected, so why would anyone want to do so?
But this is all courtesy, not reality. Reality takes no account of people’s feelings. I don’t want to get naked in front of someone of the opposite sex, no matter what they think they are. And when it comes to legislation or other state action they must be based on reality, regardless of how people feel about it. If someone is male then he is male no matter what he says, and the law, to whatever extent it must distinguish between the sexes, must base itself on the physical anatomy, wherever possible. In the rare case where the anatomy gives no answer it must either use other means, or else throw up its hands and say it doesn’t know.
So, if more school districts permit school choice & vouchers, then these kids could just move to a new school and start with a new name, gender, etc.
If no one knows that you started out differently, then there is no problem – don’t tell and don’t ask.
But, I know, they want the attention because they are angry and they want everyone to be angry.
Slightly off topic, but check out this long article on WWUT concerning a change story from being a leftist to voting for Trump.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/05/a-primer-on-the-hatred-of-climate-skeptics-one-woman-saw-the-light-and-is-no-longer-a-leftist/
Simple solution: many larger stores have created family restrooms suitable for men or for women, equipped with changing stations. Unisex.
In crowded places like New York City, most restaurant restrooms are already unisex, because there is only one, and it accommodates only one person at a time.
Petrushka, many of the transgender activists do NOT want ‘family’ or ‘unisex’ bathrooms. They want to use the women’s rooms. It isn’t about bodily functions, it’s about forcing their life style on the ‘normals’.
Not really true; they don’t mind such arrangements, so long as they’re made for everyone. But if there’s a locker room where girls shower together, then by gum they must allow all girls in, even the kind with penises, even the ones who just decided that morning that they were girls.
This is actually a complex problem … and one which was solved (or at least, solved well enough to be functional) many years ago. There’s really no need to address is de novo on the basis of molecular biology, religious abstractions, “common sense” or any other prejudice.
Unfortunately, although a non-problem, modern liberalism saw a potential hornet’s nest, and just had to poke a stick in it.
So, what was the solution to this stupid problem? Most jurisdictions of which I’m aware accept a person’s current name—whether original or legally changed—as the determining factor. Very straightforward, simple paperwork, no existential difficulties, no fundamental Platonic questions, and it saves people from resorting to the unsanitary practice of doing it out behind the barn while waiting for our glacial courts to weigh in.
It seems that the Gloucester School Board chose another definition, and did a bit of hornet-poking of its own.
The ensuing excitement serves ’em right, I suppose.
And when he/she chooses an androgynous name? and checks the box not conforming to anatomy?
I actually feel bad for these kids. High school is tough enough without dealing with internal demons like this.
That said, we’ve gone insane. We know that genuine cases of transgenderism are exceedingly rare. We know that feelings of gender dysphoria among young people often reverse. We know that high schoolers are not necessarily the most rational beings on the planet. So why are we encouraging this behavior? I know two high school teachers very well, one is my sister. Both have seen multiple cases of supposed cases of transgendered students in the last 3 years, after zero cases in their previous 30 years combined teaching experience. Students having problems should be dealt with gently and discreetly. Dictates from Washington are insulting to the adults who work in our schools, and making this the new social justice crusade will be devastating for students reaching for a cause for their discontent.
I feel sorry for the teachers and classmates and administrators and the whole community. Looking as a plump androgynous person anyhow, what’s the point? I figure that is a basic health responsibility: keep oneself fit enough that others won’t have trouble identifying your gender by your shape.
Johns Hopkins, which pioneered sex change operations, has stopped doing them because they noticed a high rate of suicide among those patients about twenty years after the surgery.
Apparently the patients had believed that the surgery would solve all their problems, and when it finally soaked in that it hadn’t, they killed themselves.
Beyond Bathrooms: Granted the number of individuals involved are few, these ludicrous changes on birth certificates have consequences. Census & crime statistics will be skewed but not significantly. There are foreseeable problems with health statistics and protocols particularly for the Trans groups which are already plagued with a myriad of maladies disproportionate to the baseline. Men and Women have different obvious health issues. Children and adults have different health issues. So the medical community will obviously ignore the gender fad and treat actual males & females as actual males & females. This absurdity of the leftist World of Imagination being legislated is mind boggling. A tangential example are the “Skäggbarn/Bearded Children”, bogus adults pretending to be children and condoned by willfully blind activist politicians. Many of the invading migrants have severe health issues. In Norway they have documented some very real problems as adults pretending to be children are only permitted to receive children’s dosages of medicines yielding detrimental results.
Reality is hard to ignore.
There are legitimate and practical concerns here. A child knows the difference between male and female. When that child starts kindergarten a school district is seriously going to say that what their eyes see is not true?
Then, suppose Sam in first grade tells the school he is a female simply because he says so, will the school tell the parents or go along with it and not allow the parent know?
How does this be cemented knowing that there is fluidity with so many young people? Based on that thought can anyone say once transgender, always transgender?
How does a school district address the student who says they are not the traditional and normal gender of female or male?
In fact, how does being (T) transgender become part of the LGB, those who identify as such is an issue more so if sexual orientation?
Is the (T) holding onto the LGB because of the advances for those who have seen great strides in rights?
Is being T the same as being LGB?
Who makes the actual determination of who is transgender in a school district?
Who makes the actual determination of who is transgender in a school district?
Why even have Title IX for woman of the lines become blurred?
How would a school district justify legally that it is ok for an 18 year old male to expose himself to a 14 year old girl in a girls locker room, yet outside this would lead to an arrest?
Does this truly come down to adults pushing this on minors for political purposes?
How does a school district justify this when even the medical community is not in agreement and even pro transgender medical providers agree that the chromosomes stay the same as the traditional views?
Are we going to ditch all references to sex and gender as what is agreed upon as normal and agreed upon for thousands of years?
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Gender Confusion is a progressive condition amplified by ulterior motives of special and peculiar interests.
That said, this ruling does not affect homosexual, bisexuals, and other orientations in the transgender spectrum disorder. This is not a transgender ban, not even a crossover ban, but a considered response to social liberals targeting prepubescent and adolescent children for transgender conversion therapy.
I wonder if the apparent growing number of sexually confused children might not be the result of parents choosing to raise their children without sexual cues. You know the kind of parents I’m talking about – the ones who take the doll away from the little girl and give her the truck while her brother gets the doll.
To Milhouse’s long response:
“But this is all courtesy, not reality. Reality takes no account of people’s feelings. I don’t want to get naked in front of someone of the opposite sex, no matter what they think they are.”
I’m going to guess the get naked in front of would be in a gym setting. Years ago I had a student who presented himself as gay because he was, but he didn’t announce it. The other students gave him a bad time. He signaled through the school psychologist I didn’t need to defend him. I did. I didn’t want anybody coming to my class thinking they could treat anybody disrespectfully, or that they would receive that treatment. What I told my students was that they only needed to know somebody else’s sexual orientation if they were wishing to have an intimate sexual relationship with them. Otherwise, nobody needs to know. I still think that. If a girl wants to pretend they are a guy, that’s ok with me. Schools have tried offering private restrooms but the usual thing is they insist on using shared space, the boys locker room. It isn’t enough that others go along, they have share it. That is really objectionable.
Please post the supporting brief from tech companies. I found it an “interesting” read.