The Supreme Court declined to hear a legal battle over the rights of transgender students on Monday, handing a victory to Gavin Grimm over the Virginia school board that denied him the right to use the boys’ restroom.
As is its custom, the court did not say why it was rejecting the appeal of the Gloucester County school district. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. said they would have accepted the case.
The court’s decision not to take up the case does not establish a national precedent, nor does it signal agreement with the lower court.
Legal battles involving transgender rights are being fought in lower courts, and the Supreme Court often lets such issues percolate before weighing in. A direct split among the regional appeals courts is often what prompts the justices to enter the debate.
In a 2-to-1 decision last August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit said the school board had practiced sex-based discrimination and violated the 14th Amendment by prohibiting Grimm, a transgender student, from using the bathroom that aligned with his gender identity. His high school offered a single-stall restroom as an alternative.

Judge Henry F. Floyd wrote that the 4th Circuit, which covers Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia and the Carolinas, was joining “a growing consensus of courts” finding that the Constitution and federal law protects transgender students “from school bathroom policies that prohibit them from affirming their gender.”

Floyd framed the case in historical terms.

“The proudest moments of the federal judiciary have been when we affirm the burgeoning values of our bright youth, rather than preserve the prejudices of the past,” Floyd wrote. “How shallow a promise of equal protection that would not protect Grimm from the fantastical fears and unfounded prejudices of his adult community. It is time to move forward.”
Floyd’s ruling quoted the Supreme Court’s landmark victory for gay and transgender workers last June, which said a federal law forbidding discrimination protects sexual orientation and gender identity.



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