The United States Supreme Court will not take up a case litigating the restrooms that students who identify as transgender can use in school.
The case involved an Indiana public school district that required middle school students to use bathrooms that matched their biological sex, not their gender identity. The Metropolitan School District of Martinsville had asked the nation’s highest court to overturn a lower court's ruling which stated the policy likely violated the Constitution.
In its 2023 decision, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago cited the 14th Amendment and Title IX of the Education Amendment of 1972 — arguing the policy violated protection guarantees. The lower court cited a standard set in a 2017 case involving a transgender-identifying student in Wisconsin although it was generally believed that the Supreme Court would take the case upon appeal.
“Litigation over transgender rights is occurring all over the country, and we assume that at some point the Supreme Court will step in with more guidance than it has furnished so far,” the court wrote in its decision, per the IndyStar.
The plaintiff – a student identified as A.C. – was in seventh grade when the initial lawsuit was brought. Officials at John R. Wooden Middle School required the student to use either the female restrooms which corresponded with the student’s sex at birth or unisex bathrooms in the school’s health clinic. The school reportedly told the student that there would be disciplinary consequences for not complying with the rule. The student, who identifies as a boy, is now in high school and can use male restrooms in alignment with the student’s perception of gender identity.
The Metropolitan School District appealed to the Supreme Court and has argued that “Title IX lets schools provide separate bathrooms on the basis of sex and that equal-protection concerns do not bar schools from protecting the interests of other students ‘in shielding their bodies from exposure to the opposite sex,’” per Reuters.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, which filed the initial lawsuit on behalf of the then-middle schooler's family, urged the Supreme Court not to consider the case.
“Every family should be able to trust their child will be treated with the same rights and respect as every other student. But policies that discriminate against transgender students deny them the same chance to learn and thrive as their peers, and cause them severe risk of both emotional and physical harm,” said Ken Falk, the legal director of the ACLU of Indiana, in a December press release. “Denying transgender youth equal access to school facilities does nothing to keep other students safe and instead puts transgender students themselves in danger.”
This is not the first time the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to take up a case involving public school bathroom policies.
“In 2021, the high court chose not to review a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit involving a transgender boy named Gavin Grimm,” reported USA Today. “The appeals court ruled that bathroom restrictions at a Virginia school amounted to discrimination.”
