EARLIER COVERAGE
Trump administration to lift transgender bathroom guidance
The justices cited a decision last month by the Trump administration that scrapped guidance issued last year by former President Barack Obama's administration declaring that schools should make every effort to accommodate transgender students.
Last year’s decision by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia relied in part on the Obama administration’s guidance that under Title IX of the 1972 federal education law, public schools cannot discriminate against transgender students.
The new decision by the Supreme Court makes it unlikely that it will issue a final ruling on transgender bathrooms until next year. If the U.S. Senate confirms federal appeals Judge Neil Gorsuch — President Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court — a full court of nine justices would hear the case.
Here's how 3 Ohio school districts handled Obama's transgender guidance. https://t.co/QOVT1i4170 pic.twitter.com/dsHs3hamQQ
— Ohio_Politics (@Ohio_Politics) February 23, 2017
Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest lesbian, gay and bisexual organization, complained that “thousands of transgender students across the country will have to wait even longer for a final decision from our nation's highest court affirming their basic rights.”
But Dan Tierney, a spokesman for Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, said it was "not surprising the Supreme Court vacated the Fourth Circuit decision and sent the case back, given that the basis of the previous decision was the “Dear Colleague” guidance which was withdrawn by the Trump administration. Attorney General DeWine strongly believes these questions should be handled by our local school officials, which in Ohio means our locally elected school board members."
DeWine last year joined nine other states in challenging the Obama administration’s guidance, contending that gender is determined by “genes and anatomy,” not what the person chooses.
In a separate case, a federal judge last year ruled that Ohio's Highland Local school district, which covers parts of Delaware, Knox and Morrow counties, had to allow transgender students to use the bathroom, locker room and showers of their gender identity. However, that judge based his ruling on Title IX, not the guidance issued by the Obama administration.
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