The defendants in Grimm v. Gloucester have asked the Supreme Court to push the oral argument date back by at least a month, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. The Court was scheduled to hear oral arguments on March 28.

Gavin Grimm, a high school student in Gloucester County, Virginia is suing for the right to use the boys’ restroom. Grimm is a biological female who identifies as a male.

Defendants Want Trump to Weight In

The Gloucester County School Board asked the Court to halt consideration of the case so that the new presidential administration has an opportunity to offer input, according to the AP.

Barack Obama was president when Grimm’s complaint was first filed in 2015. In 2016, Obama issued a Dear Colleague letter to public schools around the nation making the same assertion as Grimm: that refusing to allow transgender students to use the restroom opposite their biological sex is the same as sex discrimination per Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

President Donald Trump rescinded Obama’s policy in another Dear Colleague letter last week. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said the issue was best left to states and local school districts.

Conservatives Want Gorsuch Confirmed Before Grimm Decided

As The Daily Signal reported last month, many conservatives hope that Neil Gorsuch, a demonstrably right-leaning judge of the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals and Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, is confirmed in time to hear Grimm. If the Court agrees to the school board’s request, he very well could be — his confirmation hearing is set to begin March 20.

As the AP reported, the Supreme Court could hear Grimm’s case in March as planned or postpone it by one month or several. It could also send the case back to a lower court.

Other cases on the issue of transgender bathroom policies are pending in Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas, according to the AP. (For more from the author of “School District Asks Supreme Court to Postpone Transgender Case Grimm v. Gloucester” please click HERE)

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As a woman and a mother, I am thrilled that the Trump administration has rescinded President Barack Obama’s unlawful transgender school policy regarding the use of showers, locker rooms, dorms, and bathrooms in public schools and universities.

President Donald Trump has returned the policymaking power back to parents and state and local officials.

Like many Americans, I was shocked by the Obama administration’s “Dear Colleague” letter threatening our nation’s schools with loss of federal funds unless they adopt radical gender identity policies. The Obama letter twisted Title IX—a law banning sex discrimination in education—and opened the door to a myriad of real dangers to women and girls, the very people Title IX was meant to help.

Wanting to protect my school-aged children, and also having been a victim of sexual assault, I initiated the “United We Stand” campaign last summer to generate calls to the White House respectfully requesting that Obama reverse course.

A decade ago, I worked in the correspondence office at the White House and learned firsthand that administrations take citizen communication very seriously.

Presidents need to hear from the people when they’ve done something wrong, but also when they’ve done something right. So last week, I called the White House comment line to relay my gratitude.

Trump’s decisiveness on this issue shows that he cares more about people than political correctness—that all our children deserve a safe and respectful learning environment, not just a very small minority, and that privacy and free speech are rights that American parents hold dear.

It also shows respect for the right of self-governance. An issue like bathroom policy is best determined at the local level, by the people closest to it—not by bureaucrats in Washington. The new guidance from the administration is both good policy and good governance.

But the fight is far from over, as there is no guarantee that local school boards will adopt sensible solutions unless they hear from concerned parents and students instead of just a vocal minority backed by well-funded outside activist groups.

In my local school district of Fairfax County, Virginia, parents are speaking out every other week asking our school board to reverse its transgender policy. We aren’t asking to “discriminate” against gender confused children, but to accommodate them with individual private facilities so that no one’s privacy is put at risk. We are merely asking for commonsense solutions for all students, not just a few.

Have you ever attended your local school board meeting? You will find they are democracy in action, but only if people make the effort to attend and voice their concerns.

Sadly, Trump is receiving a lot of flack for merely righting his predecessor’s wrong. While “just 28 percent of all Americans believe the federal government should be responsible for setting bathroom policies in elementary and secondary schools,” according to a recent poll, a vocal minority has dominated print and airwaves, and very likely the White House comment lines, giving the impression that the people are against Trump’s wise move.

The silent majority must no longer be silent. With Trump, we now have a president who is focused on remedying the lawlessness of the prior administration.

This mom has conveyed her support and gratitude. I hope others will follow. (For more from the author of “Trump Has Reversed the Transgender Bathroom Mandate. Here’s How Moms Like Me Pushed the Fight.” please click HERE)

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On February 22, the Trump administration released a statement rescinding previous Obama administration guidance dealing with students who identify as transgender.

Contrary to almost all the news reporting on this story, the real question addressed by the new administration’s guidance is not (at least not directly), “Which restrooms or locker rooms should students who identify as transgender use?”

Instead, it is something much simpler — “Who gets to decide?”

The answer that President Trump’s administration has now given is also simple: “Not us. Not the federal government.”

Getting Title IX Right

The two Obama administration documents that have now been rescinded — a 2016 “Dear Colleague” letter to every school district in the country, and a lesser-known “opinion letter” issued January 2015 — asserted a specific interpretation of a specific federal law.

“Title IX” is common shorthand for “Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972” — a federal law which prohibited discrimination on the basis of “sex” in any school that receives federal funds (as all do).

The Obama administration argued that discrimination based on “sex” includes discrimination based on “gender identity;” and that failing to treat students in accord with their self-perceived “gender identity” (rather than their biological sex) in all school activities (including restroom and locker room assignments) constitutes such “discrimination.”

This position is legally untenable. Title IX was enacted by Congress, and signed into law by President Nixon, in 1972. It strains credulity to suggest that the legislative intent of Congress — 45 years ago — was to authorize biological males to use female facilities, and vice versa. The logical conclusion is that “sex” in Title IX is a reference only to one’s biological sex at birth.

If Congress wanted to expand the reach of Title IX to encompass “gender identity” as well as “sex,” Congress could amend the law to do so. Until now, they have chosen not to. No president simply has the authority under our Constitution to effect such an expansion unilaterally. President Trump’s decision to withdraw the Obama guidance should be welcomed by anyone who believes in limited government or in the rule of law — regardless of how they feel about transgender issues.

Legal Issues With “Gender Identity” Protection

Making “gender identity” a protected category under non-discrimination laws or policies would raise concerns beyond the question of bathrooms and locker rooms. Will staff be punished for inadvertently referring to a transgender student by the wrong, non-preferred, pronoun? Will fellow students have their freedom of speech or religion infringed upon, by being punished for expressing the view that God created human beings male and female, or that biological sex is a more valid indicator of maleness or femaleness than subjective “gender identity?”

The issue of sex-separated facilities or programs is an important one. Even future Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, defending the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to prohibit sex discrimination under the law, wrote in the Washington Post in 1975 that “the equality principle” is compatible with having facilities separated on the basis of sex, declaring, “Separate places to disrobe, sleep, perform personal bodily functions are permitted, in some situations required, by regard for individual privacy.”

Common sense, however, tells us that the reason we have separate facilities for men and women, boys and girls in the first place is not because their gender identities are different, but because their anatomy is different.

Privacy Needs

Court precedents on physical privacy have established that it is a right which includes the right not to expose one’s nude or semi-nude body to someone of the opposite biological sex, and similarly not to be exposed involuntarily to the nude or semi-nude body of someone of the opposite biological sex. The Obama guidelines would have cast this privacy right to the winds, in favor of an unrestricted preference for gender identity over biological sex.

Many observers express concern about the needs of students who identify as transgender — as they should. But what about the concerns of Kaeley Triller Haver — a rape survivor who showered in her underwear because of the trauma she had endured? What about the female student in Illinois who now wears her gym clothes to school under her regular clothes — and then puts the regular clothes back on over the gym clothes, without showering — in order to avoid exposing herself to a biological male who was given permission to use the girls’ locker room?

Providing single-user, gender-neutral restrooms or changing facilities is a reasonable accommodation that could protect everyone’s concern for privacy and safety — yet it has been rejected as discriminatory by transgender activists and the Obama administration.

The Trump administration policy will open the door for such accommodations to ensure that the legitimate needs and concerns of all students are met. This is far preferable to a “one-size-fits-all,” top-down solution imposed by the federal government. (For more from the author of “Trump Returns Authority Over School Transgender Policies to States and Localities” please click HERE)

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