BOYERTOWN, PA — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that it would not hear a challenge brought forth by students over the Boyertown Area School District’s transgender bathroom policy.
The district in Berks Couty announced in 2017 that they would allow LGBT students to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identified.
The suit, which had made it up to the Third Circuit court, argued that the policy violated the privacy of other students. It’s reflective of a larger national discourse over how public schools are handling the rights of students who want to use facilities based on their gender identity, rather than they gender with which they were born.
In a statement, the American Civil Liberties Union called it a “victory for trans students and educators nationwide.”
The decision comes as new health guidelines released by the World Health Organizaiton Monday removed “gender identity disorder” as a mental health issue from its guidlines for the first time ever. But the word transgender continues to inspire fierce debate, and President Trump’s administration has forbidden the CDC from using it, according to the Washington Post.
On Tuesday, Gov. Wolf called for state protections for LGBTQ individuals in the wake of what he called Trump’s “abhorrent discriminatory track record.”
“I urge the General Assembly to advance protections for the LGBTQ community by passing comprehensive non-discrimination and expanding our hate crimes law to protect LGBTQ citizens,” Wolf said.
Alliance Defends, the group which brought the case to court on behalf of a group of students at Boyertown, said the Supreme Court decision rejected “common sense.”
“…sound reasons based on common sense have always existed for schools to separate male and female teenagers in showers, restrooms, and locker rooms,” ADF Senior Counsel and Vice President of Appellate Advocacy, John Bursch, said in a statement. “No student’s recognized right to bodily privacy should be made contingent on what other students believe about their own gender.”
Bursch added that he has hopes the Supreme Court will take up a similar case in the future.
The case, Doe vs. Boyertown Area School District, was split into two specific questions: the first was whether the constitutional right to privacy — of non-transgender students — was violated by the policy. The second was whether the policy violated Title IX, as the suit claimed it “denied or limited access to educational opportunities.”
In denying to hear the case, the Supreme Court affirmed earlier court decisions that rejected both of those points.
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