A federal court in Virginia has ordered the Gloucester County School Board to schedule a settlement conference with trans activist Gavin Grimm, ruling that federal law protects transgender students from being forced to use separate restroom facilities.
The U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia today denied the school board’s motion to dismiss the case brought by Grimm, holding that Title IX and the Constitution protect transgender students from being excluded from the common restrooms that align with their gender identity.
The court directed the parties to schedule a settlement conference within 30 days.
“I feel an incredible sense of relief,” Grimm said. “After fighting this policy since I was 15 years old, I finally have a court decision saying that what the Gloucester County School Board did to me was wrong and it was against the law. I was determined not to give up because I didn’t want any other student to have to suffer the same experience that I had to go through.”
“The district court has upheld what Gavin argued all along,” said ACLU of Virginia Executive Director Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, “that trans students deserve the same protections under Title IX as any other student and can’t be stigmatized and ostracized just because of who they are.”
ACLU Senior Staff Attorney Joshua Block said the ruling vindicates what Grimm has been saying from the beginning.
“Federal law protects Gavin and other students who are transgender from being stigmatized and excluded from using the same common restrooms that other boys and girls use,” Block said. “These sorts of discriminatory policies do nothing to protect privacy and only serve to harm and humiliate transgender students.”
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