Anti-Transgender Gloucester County Appeals to SCOTUS

The anti-transgender Gloucester County School Board - the face of hate and ignorance

Having been rebuffed by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals three times now, the Gloucester County School Board has appealed its losses on the issue of the treatment of transgender students to the United States Supreme Court.  In addition, it has asked the high court to stay the 4th Circuit's ruling in favor of 17 year old Gavin Grimm pending the Court's decision of the case.  I'm hoping that SCOTUs both refuses the stay and refuses to take the case - a possibility heightened by the Court's current 8 justice membership.  The bottom line issue driving this case is the school board's desire to pander to Christofascists who began lobbying the board when it was learned that the board planned to accommodate Grimm's needs. Take away the religious extremists and the case would never have occurred.  The Washington Post looks at the board's latest effort at self-prostitution to the forces of hate.  Here are excerpts:

A school board that has been ordered to allow a transgender student to use the boys’ high school bathroom has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the order, arguing that it will cause “irreparable harm” and violate the privacy of students.

The Gloucester County, Va. School Board, which is being sued for passing a policy that barred a transgender student from the boys’ bathroom, said it hopes the U.S. Supreme Court will weigh in on the matter. In the interim, it is asking the high court to allow it to continue banning the transgender boy from the boys’ room while attorneys prepare a writ of certiorari to the nation’s highest court. Currently, the court’s order would mean transgender students could use the bathroom corresponding with their gender identity when school returns for the coming academic year.

Gavin Grimm, a 17-year-old rising senior at Gloucester High filed a lawsuit against the School Board last year after the board passed a policy requiring students to use bathrooms based on their “biological gender.” Grimm alleged that the policy barring him from the boys’ bathroom violated his civil rights and ran afoul of Title IX, which bans sex discrimination in public schools.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit sided with the teen in April, deferring to the Obama administration’s position that transgender students are entitled to use bathrooms that match their gender identity under Title IX. It was the highest court to rule on the question of how to accommodate transgender students in public schools. A federal judge later granted Grimm a preliminary injunction ordering the School Board to allow Grimm to use the boys’ bathroom while the case proceeds.

In a filing to the high court Wednesday, the School Board again asked for the case to be paused — and to keep Grimm out of the boys’ bathroom — until the case concludes.

Joshua Block, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, also has disputed the notion that allowing Grimm to use the boys’ bathroom would cause the sort of harm the school board describes.

“The only thing this injunction does is let Gavin use the boys’ restroom,” Block said last week. “The notion that simply allowing one boy to use the restroom during his senior year of high school would cause the sky to fall is impossible to take seriously.”

To the Christofascists the sky will fall because they will lose the ability to punish transgender students who fail to conform to the hate and ignorance based beliefs of the "godly folk."