The US Supreme Court denied certiorari Tuesday to an Indiana public school district’s appeal of a ruling that prohibited the district from enforcing its transgender bathroom policy.
In August, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Metropolitan School District of Martinsville’s policy, which barred transgender students from using bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity, violated students’ rights. The court found that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in educational settings that receive federal funding, and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which requires that all individuals receive equal protection under the law, protect students’ right to use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity.
A transgender minor and his parents originally filed the lawsuit against the school district in December 2021. The district court granted an injunction that ordered the school to grant the boy access to the boys’ bathrooms, and the circuit court upheld the order on appeal. The Supreme Court refused without comment to hear the case, letting the lower court’s ruling stand.
Multiple states have seen challenges to transgender students’ right to access bathrooms consistent with their gender identity in recent years. For instance, in August, a federal judge rejected a challenge to an Ohio school district’s gender-inclusive bathroom policy. Access to bathrooms is not the only LGBTQ issue being increasingly litigated. In December, a federal judge blocked certain provisions of an Iowa law that prohibited school libraries from distributing books containing LGBTQ issues. The governor of Ohio vetoed a bill that same month that would have banned gender-affirming care for minors and participation of transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s school sports.
The ACLU reported that state legislatures have introduced 278 bills targeting LGBTQ issues for the 2024 legislative session. The report comes less than a year after the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ rights group, declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ people in the US.
