The U.S. Supreme Court will hear Gavin Grimm‘s landmark transgender bathroom case on March 28, according to the Court’s schedule released last week.
On October 28, 2016, the Court announced it would take up the case of Gavin Grimm, a transgender boy in Gloucester who is suing his high school for the right to use the boys’ bathroom and locker room, which correspond to his male gender identity. Grimm’s lawsuit against the Gloucester County School district’s bathroom policy specifically cites the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits schools receiving federal funds from discriminating on the basis of sex.
“Being a high school student going to the Supreme Court certainly changed my narrative from the typical high school experience,” Grimm says as he gets fitted for a suit in a video produced by the ACLU, which is supporting Grimm in the case.
His case drew headlines as it advanced from remarks before the school board to federal courts. The Supreme Court’s ruling could settle, one way or another, the debate over whether transgender people should be regarded as the gender they say they are, and allowed equal access to public spaces like restrooms, for years to come.
“Two years ago, when I spoke to the school board, I remember being very afraid but I also remember having purpose and a goal,” Grimm says, “which was just to be able to be myself.”
After Donald Trump‘s election, there was some question about whether the court would uphold last year’s decision to hear the case. If Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles E. Grassley succeeds in getting SCOTUS nominee Neil Gorsuch confirmed within six weeks time, the case may be decided by a full court. A lower court ordered the school board to accommodate Grimm, but that order is currently on hold thanks to an injunction from the High Court.
