Transgender student bolstered by support
WASHINGTON — The bespectacled teenager in the gray ACLU hoodie and cargo pants stood, back pressed against a chain-link fence on Pennsylvania Avenue, under a sign saying “No Trespassing, Authorized Personnel Only.” The White House, illuminated at night, cast a glow over well-wishers who, having just wrapped up a protest against President Donald Trump, waited in line to pay homage to 17-year-old Gavin Grimm.
One by one, they stepped up for a handshake, teary hug or selfie. A mother cradling a sleepy kindergartner. A government civil-rights lawyer and his husband. An activist wearing white face paint, pussycat ears, a tiny veil and black leather bodice. A high-schooler carrying a homemade poster: “Respect Existence or Expect Resistance.”
Grimm looked a little flustered. “Absolutely humbled,” he pronounced himself, after his admirers thanked him for being brave.
At home in rural Gloucester, Virginia, Grimm has a pet pig named Esmeralda, a geek’s love of Pokemon cards and 600-plus Facebook friends. He wears $12 sneakers from Wal-Mart and likes eating at Fuddruckers because the name sounds funny. He is applying for college, though he doesn’t want to talk about it.
But here in the nation’s capital and in big cities around the country, Grimm — who dashed to New York late Wednesday to appear the next morning on ABC’s “The View” — is the new face of the transgenderrights movement.
With Trump’s decision this week to rescind protections for transgender students that had allowed them to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, the next stop for Grimm is the Supreme Court, where he is the lead plaintiff in a case that could settle the contentious “bathroom debate.”
At issue is whether Title IX, a provision in a 1972 law that bans discrimination “on the basis of sex” in schools that receive federal money, also bans discrimination based on gender identity. Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, concluded that it did.
“This is a landmark case,” said Vanita Gupta, who ran the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under Obama and helped draft the executive order that was rescinded by Trump. “Why is the administration feeling like they need to do this to children at this time, when the United States Supreme Court will have the ultimate word?”
The White House, which said it would not defend the Obama order in a similar but separate case in Texas, is not actually a party to the Grimm case, in which Grimm has sued the Gloucester County school board.
In 2014, when he was a sophomore, the board barred Grimm from using boys’ bathrooms and required him instead to use separate “single-user” restrooms — a dictate that he and his lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union say violates his civil rights under Title IX.
Lawyers for both sides said Thursday that, despite the administration’s move, the case would go forward as planned.
“What we’re trying to advocate is middle ground,” said Kyle Duncan, a lawyer for the school board, which he said had sought to accommodate Gavin. “This is a sensitive and difficult issue in which everyone’s privacy rights need to be respected.”
But Joshua Block, Grimm’s lawyer at the civil liberties union, said the board’s decision was anything but sensitive. He said Gavin was “forced to use these singleuser restrooms that no other student is required to use,” adding, “That is classic sex discrimination no matter how you think about it.”
The case is a risky one. Both sides agree that if the court chooses to be expansive, the implications for transgender people will be far- reaching.
If Grimm wins, and the court declares that Title IX protects transgender people, all manner of student life — from locker rooms to college dormitories — could be affected.
If he loses, the transgenderrights cause could be set back years, even decades.