The US Supreme Court on Friday
announced that it would hear arguments in a case involving a
transgender student on March 28.
The high court agreed to hear the case
last year.
Gavin Grimm, a senior at Gloucester
High School in Virginia, is challenging his school district's policy
that prohibits transgender students such as himself from using the
bathroom of their choice. Grimm's ACLU lawyers have argued that the
policy violates federal civil rights laws, specifically Title IX,
which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals
sided with Grimm, who came out in his sophomore year. The school
board appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which stayed the lower
court's order.
The Obama administration interpreted
Title IX to include transgender people, but it remains to be seen how
the new administration under President Donald Trump will respond.
During the presidential campaign, Trump
supported North Carolina's House Bill 2, the first and only state
law that prohibits transgender people from using the bathroom of
their choice, and said that he would do
away with “political correctness” in the military as it relates
to transgender troops serving openly.
(Related: Gavin
Grimm: Transgender teen at center of bathroom debate: I'm not
dangerous.)