Supreme Court Cancels Hearing in Transgender Bathroom Case

Today the Supreme Court announced that it would not hear oral arguments in Gloucester County School Board v. G.G., the case asserting a transgender student's right under Title IX to use the bathroom that matches his gender identity, as it had been schedule to do later this month. Instead, the Court decided to vacate the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion that had been appealed to the Court and order a rehearing in the case. The Fourth Circuit court had earlier held that the plaintiff in the case, high school student Gavin Grimm, had the right to use the boys' bathroom at his high school.  However, the Fourth Circuit decision deferred to the Obama administration's interpretation of Title IX in reaching that result. Now that the current administration has withdrawn that guidance, the deference argument is moot, and it is up to the appellate court to decide for itself whether Title IX supports the right that Gavin Grimm claims. Whatever the Fourth Circuit does decides could eventually be appealed again to the Supreme Court, but for now, the battlefield of this case has shifted from D.C. to Richmond.

Besides postponing an eventual Supreme Court showdown over transgender rights, today's move by the Supreme Court cancels another one over the more general question of whether courts should defer to guidance documents issued by government agencies -- though this results may have been ordained (and some might suggest, orchestrated) by the administration's decision to withdraw the guidance in the first place. While many have criticized the former administration's tendency to issue clarifying guidance documents rather than create new rules, it may be that current administration plans to do rely on a similar strategy at least as often. In any case, the president benefits from the fact that doctrine of judicial deference to such interpretations remains in tact.