The United States Supreme Court has rejected an Oregon-based lawsuit seeking to strip transgender students of their rights.
On Monday, the Court declined to hear an appeal from Parents for Privacy, an anti-trans group that in 2017 sued Oregon’s Dallas School District over a policy that allowed a trans high school student to use the restrooms and locker rooms consistent with his gender identity. In 2018, a US District judge ruled in favor of the school district’s policy, and that decision was upheld by a federal appeals court in February 2020. Basic Rights Oregon and the ACLU represented Dallas School District in the legal fight.
Now, the highest court in the country has refused to consider the case—meaning the appeals court’s decision affirming trans students’ rights to use the facilities consistent with their genders will stand.
“The Supreme Court has once again said that transgender youth are not a threat to other students,” said Chase Strangio, deputy director for trans justice with the ACLU, in a press release Monday. “The decision not to take this case is an important and powerful message to trans and non-binary youth that they deserve to share space with and enjoy the benefits of school alongside their non-transgender peers.”
Parents for Privacy’s argument hinged on the idea that allowing trans students to use the correct restrooms and locker rooms would violate cisgender students’ right to privacy. The federal appeals court shot down that argument in February, writing that there is no legal basis stating school facilities “must be segregated based only on biological sex, and cannot accommodate gender identity.”
The Court declined to hear a similar case out of Pennsylvania in May 2019—but the recent confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett gave the Court a strong conservative majority, and LGBTQ+ advocates have feared that the court’s new makeup would embolden its conservative justices to go after queer and trans rights. In declining to consider the Oregon case, the Supreme Court is signaling that it does not wish to change the precedent around trans students’ bathroom rights set by appeals courts in this case, or other legal cases.
But while the Court has upheld trans' students bathroom rights, that’s hardly the only hurdle trans children are facing: A slew of Republican-controlled state legislatures are now focused on denying trans children necessary medical treatment related to their transitions.
“As we look towards state legislative sessions that will likely continue the attacks on trans youth… we will continue to fight in courts, in legislatures, and in our families and communities to ensure that all trans people feel safe and belong,” said Strangio in Monday’s press release.
