Supreme Court refuses case blocking trans teens from using school bathrooms of their choice

The case centers on whether allowing trans students into bathrooms of their choice violates the privacy rights of others

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a case challenging an Oregon school’s policy of allowing transgender students to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity.

The ruling advances a legal understanding of gender and privacy that’s more expansive and inclusive of trans people, and runs counter to liberal concerns that the conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s recent appointment to the high court would swing it far to the right.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which intervened in the case, celebrated the decision.

“It is hugely important for trans people that the Court denied review in this case," Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice with the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project, said on Monday in a tweet. “Here cis people argued that a policy protecting trans students violated cis people's rights. This is good news. Onward.”

The decision, offered without comment, leaves in place a February ruling from a federal appeals court. The 9th Circuit ruled that the bathroom policy, from the Dallas School District in northwest Oregon, did not violate the constitutional privacy rights of cisgender students, or run afoul of Title IX, a federal law that prevents gender discrimination at schools receiving federal funding.

The controversy began in 2015, when a student at Dallas High School, whose birth sex was female, publicly identified as male and asked to use the men’s locker rooms and bathroom. The school created a “Student Safety Plan” allowing him to do so, and offered alternatives to other students who were uncomfortable.

Individuals as well as two groups representing parents and students, Parents for Privacy and Parents’ Rights in Education, sued the district, and lost in a trial court in 2018.

Shortly after taking office, the Trump administration rescinded an Obama era civil rights guidance that Title IX protects the right of transgender students to use the facilities of their choice.