The sun sets on the Supreme Court in Washington. Photo / Jabin Botsford, The Washington Post
The Supreme Court today left standing a lower court order allowing a 14-year-old transgender student to use a school bathroom that aligns with his gender identity, turning aside an emergency appeal from South Carolina to lift the ruling.
The majority said the state had not met the bar to seek an emergency reversal of a preliminary injunction by a federal judge, who had permitted the teen to use the boys’ toilets while he sues over the state’s bathroom restrictions for transgender students.
“The denial of the application is not a ruling on the merits of the legal issues presented in the litigation,” the United States court wrote.
“Rather, it is based on the standards applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this Court.”
Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito, all conservatives, said they would have blocked the transgender teen’s use of the boys’ restroom.
The preliminary injunction applies only to the student, who attends an unidentified high school in Berkeley County outside of Charleston.
The ruling comes as the Supreme Court is set to hear a major case during the term that begins next month that probably will decide whether US states can bar transgender athletes from playing on girls’ and women’s sports teams in schools and universities. More than two dozen states have enacted such bans.
The ruling cuts against recent decisions by the high court as US President Donald Trump and some states have moved to roll back transgender rights in a range of areas.
Earlier this year, the justices allowed the Trump Administration to ban transgender soldiers from the military for the time being.
Last term, in a landmark 6-3 ruling along ideological lines, the high court allowed states to ban gender transition treatments for minors.
The South Carolina case began when the state conditioned school district funding on compliance with a requirement that schools limit students to using bathrooms that correspond with their biological sex as part of a budget bill for the 2024-2025 financial year.
The transgender student, who was female at birth but has identified as a boy since childhood, was suspended from the middle school he was attending for using the boys’ bathroom and threatened with expulsion if he continued, according to plaintiff’s court filings that referred to the teen as John Doe, with male pronouns.
The student’s parents withdrew him from school and enrolled him in an online school.
The boy became academically disengaged and socially isolated, so he wanted to return to in-person learning but only if he could use the bathroom of his choosing, according to the filings.
The teen and his parents sued the state, school district, and others over the restroom restriction in 2024, saying the rule violated Title IX, the landmark law that prohibits sex discrimination in education, and constitutional provisions that all people must be treated equally.
The court initially did not rule on the teen’s request for a preliminary injunction, but he renewed it when South Carolina passed the same bathroom restrictions as part of a budget bill for the current financial year.
Then in July, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case involving transgender athletes.
A federal judge stayed the teen’s case until the high court issued a ruling in the athlete case because it touched on similar issues.
On appeal, the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit granted the teen an injunction against enforcement of the bathroom rule in his case. The ruling came the day before school was set to begin in Berkeley County.
The 4th Circuit based its ruling on a high-profile 2020 case in which it found that restrictions that had prevented a transgender student from Virginia, Gavin Grimm, from using a school bathroom that aligned with his gender identity violated Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause.
The Supreme Court declined to review that ruling.
Last month, South Carolina filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court, asking the justices to uphold the state’s bathroom restrictions in the teen’s case.
It said the high court’s ruling last year on state bans for transgender treatment for minors and the pending case on transgender athletes undercut the Grimm precedent.
“This case implicates a question fraught with emotions and differing perspectives,” the state wrote in its high court filing. “That is all the more reason to defer to state lawmakers pending appeal. The decision was the South Carolina legislature’s to make.”
Lawyers for the teen countered that such bans are harmful because they cause transgender students to avoid using bathrooms at all, causing psychological distress, anxiety, dehydration, and physical discomfort.
Alexandra Brodsky, a lawyer with Public Justice’s Students’ Civil Rights Project, which represented the teen, applauded the ruling in a statement.
“Today’s decision from the Supreme Court reaffirms what we all know to be true: Contrary to South Carolina’s insistence, trans students are not emergencies. They are not threats,” Brodsky said.
“They are young people looking to learn and grow at school, despite the state-mandated hostility they too often face.”
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