The U.S. Supreme Court said Tuesday it will not take up a high-profile dispute over a school policy that allows transgender students to use the locker rooms and restrooms of their choosing.
At issue in the case is a policy adopted by the Boyertown Area School District in Pennsylvania in the 2016-2017 school year that allows some transgender students to use school facilities based on their gender identity rather than their biological sex.
In deciding not to hear the case, the school district’s policy remains intact.
The student at the center of the case, identified as Joel Doe, learned of the policy while changing in the men’s locker room at his school, during which he encountered a female student wearing only a bra. The student, joined by others who had similar encounters, raised concerns with the school about the new policy, but were told to make it seem “natural,” according to court filings.
Joel Doe then filed a lawsuit challenging the school district’s policy and asked the courts to restore a previous rule allowing for single-sex, multi-user locker rooms and restrooms. Doe’s lawyers argue the Boyertown Area School District violated the privacy rights of students and warned that “forcing a teenager to share a locker room or restroom with a member of the opposite sex can cause embarrassment and distress, particularly for students who have been victims of sexual assault.”
The federal district court, however, denied Doe’s request, and the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit affirmed the lower court’s ruling.
The student, the appeals court said, has a “constitutionally protected privacy interest in his or her partially closed body,” but upheld the Boyertown Area School District’s policy because it “served a compelling interest — preventing discrimination against transgender students — and was narrowly tailored to that interested.”
The Supreme Court was poised to weigh in on a similar dispute involving transgender rights in 2017 after the Obama administration implemented a policy in May 2016 stating Title IX required schools to allow access to locker rooms and restrooms based on “an individual’s internal sense of gender.”
But the high court removed the case from its calendar after the Trump administration retracted the policy.