A long running legal fight over transgender students’ rights to use the restrooms and locker rooms aligned with their gender identity has come to a costly end for one rural Virginia county.
Gavin Grimm first sued the Gloucester County School Board back in 2015 after it made a policy banning the transgender male student from using the boy’s bathroom and he’s been fighting the issue in courts ever since. But this summer, after two trips to the U.S. Supreme Court, he was vindicated, giving transgender students like himself across the country facility access the courts said they deserved.
And on Thursday, armed with a Richmond-based appeals court’s opinion which compared the now-defunct policy to Virginia’s history of racial segregation, a lower court issued its final order in the case: a grant of legal fees totaling nearly $1.3 million which has already been paid by the school board via an insurance claim.
Eden Heilman, the Virginia ACLU’s Legal Director, had offered some advice for school boards considering similar policies. “I would hope that school boards would learn to stand up for children who are too vulnerable to speak up for themselves and do whatever makes the environment more inclusive,” Heilman said.
Gavin Grimm is happy for the win, but he’s still thinking of other transgender kids who continue to struggle in unsupportive communities and households. “It’s important to still make space for yourself, whether that be online with friends, in your journal, whatever you have to do. And take comfort knowing that this is not forever,” Grimm said.
Grimm spent the last three years in California and has since returned to Virginia where he plans to college.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.