Who is Gavin Grimm? Trans Student’s Lawyer Reacts To Trump Rescinding Rules on Transgender Guidance

The Trump administration rescinded the Obama administration's guidance to schools on transgender students Wednesday. The move aligned Trump's White House with conservative state lawmakers across the country who have introduced bills requiring students to use the bathroom that corresponds with the sex listed on their birth certificates. The move set up a Supreme Court battle for the future of transgender rights in America.

At the center of that battle was Gavin Grimm, a 17-year-old transgender high school student from Gloucester, Virginia, who has sued his school for banning him from communal bathroom facilities. The Supreme Court will hear Grimm's case next month.

"I think it's incredibly important to highlight this case is about so much more than restrooms," Chase Strangio, a transgender staff attorney with the ACLU LGBT Project, which is representing Grimm, said during a conference call with reporters on Thursday. "It's about whether trans people like Gavin can exist and participate in public life."

Grimm, who was born female, told school administrators that he identified as male in 2014, before the start of his sophomore year in high school. He was then allowed to use the boys' room for seven weeks without incident, according to court filings. In December of 2014, the Gloucester County School board ruled that students must use restrooms that aligned with their "corresponding biological genders" and said students with "gender identity issues" could use alternative private facilities.

"I cannot use the women's room, quite frankly, because I am not a girl," Grimm testified during a school board meeting in November 2014. "All I want to do is be a normal child and use the restroom in peace. I have had no problem from students with that, only from adults. Adults are the ones trying to restrict my rights."

After the ruling, Grimm sued the school board in 2015. When he lost his case in district court, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals eventually sided with Grimm by deferring to the Department of Education, which at the time had issued guidelines advocating that students should use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity. But last August the Supreme Court put a hold on the lower court's ruling, and in October the Court agreed to hear a challenge from the Gloucester School Board, which was scheduled for March 20.

At the center of the case was whether Title IX, the landmark 1972 law that banned sexual discrimination in schools, included protections for transgender students. The Obama administration argued it did, while the Trump administration has said it would defer to the states and local school boards. But state's rights arguments were not applicable to Title IX, an ACLU attorney said.

"Sex discrimination in public schools hasn't been something left to the schools since 1972," said Joshua Block, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU during Thursday's conference call. "What we decided in 1972 is that the federal government is going to protect everyone, regardless of where they live, against sex discrimination... it applies to sex discrimination against trans kids too."