The Supreme Court has announced that it will not hear a major case on transgender rights as previously promised, according to The New York Times. The Court agreed to hear the case of Gavin Grimm, a transgender boy who wants the right to use the men’s restroom at school, last October. It would have been the court’s first transgender rights case, and arguments were supposed to take place this month. But then the Trump administration happened.
This announcement comes after the Trump administration decided to withdraw guidance from Obama’s Department of Education that required schools to honor their students’ gender identities—for example, allowing all students who identify as male to use the men’s restroom. In 2016, the department even said schools could lose federal funding if they didn’t respect trans students’ identities. Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration has decided not to uphold the guidelines.
Now, SCOTUS has vacated the appeals court’s decision in favor of Grimm. A lower court will reconsider the case in light of the Trump administration’s new stance.
According to The Washington Post, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals must now decide how Title IX—which bans discrimination based on sex—applies to gender identity. As most of us know by now, sex and gender are different concepts, so the law isn’t totally clear on whether or not Title IX protects transgender people. The court previously upheld standards put in place by the Obama administration stating that discrimination based on gender identity was prohibited by Title IX, but with Trump’s approach, things could change.
Let’s hope, for the sake of vulnerable transgender kids everywhere, that the courts decide to protect them.