Four VA School Systems Claim 'Thousands' of Transgender Students in Landmark Case

Four schools in northern Virginia claim there are "thousands of students in Virginia public schools who...identify as transgender" and should be allowed to use whatever bathroom they choose. 

The Washington Post reports that the Alexandria, Arlington, Falls Church, and Fairfax County school boards filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Gavin Grimm, a biological girl who sued her school board in Gloucester County, Virginia in 2015 after being denied access to the boys' restroom. 

Grimm claimed that Gloucester County violated Title IX and the equal protection clause of the Constitution. The Obama administration declared that Title IX, which in 1972 prohibited discrimination in schools "on the basis" of sex, also included gender identity. 

Grimm's case made it to the Supreme Court but was returned to a lower court after the Trump administration abandoned the Obama-era rule on transgender students.

Now, Grimm's case is scheduled for trial in July at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. 

The four school boards who came to Grimm's defense shot down fears that allowing students to use whatever bathroom they choose would violate other students' privacy and make them vulnerable to sexual misconduct. 

"Male students, teachers, and parents have not used the policy as a ruse to improperly access female restrooms. Sex offenders have not exploited the policy to prey on children," the school boards said. 

Instead, they argued, it is the transgender students who have suffered "stigma and trauma."

However, the policy has come under fire from critics ranging from conservative Christians to radical feminists. 

Kara Dansky from the Women's Liberation Front told Fox News host Tucker Carlson in 2017 that women are made vulnerable by these kinds of bathroom policies. 

"We think that 'women and girls' are a meaningful category worthy of civil rights protection," she said. "If we define sex, under Title IX, to mean gender identity, what we're essentially saying is that 'women and girl' can mean anyone who self-identifies as 'women and girl,' which makes the category 'women and girls' meaningless as a category."

The Women's Liberation Front teamed up with the conservative Family Policy Alliance to challenge the Obama-era bathroom policy before Trump overturned it.