On May 28, 2019 the Supreme Court of the United States denied the appellee’s Petition for Writ of Certiorari, officially declining to review the ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Doe v. Boyertown Area School District.
That means the Boyertown case is closed, and the transgender-inclusive policy of the school district can stand.
“Today we celebrate a victory not only for transgender students at Boyertown, but for transgender students across the country,” says Women’s Law Project Staff Attorney Christine Castro, who co-authored an amicus brief supporting the legal basis of Boyertown’s transgender-inclusive policy with fellow WLP attorneys and attorney Nicholas S. Feltham of Drink Biddle & Reath LLC.
“The Boyertown school district was correct to provide a trans-inclusive policy. All students deserve the dignity of using facilities that correspond with their gender identity. Legally speaking, the arguments made against Boyertown’s inclusive policy were based on an incomplete and inaccurate understanding of ‘sex’ that conflicts with the purpose and application of Title IX.”
Our brief supporting Boyertown’s policy argued that the presence of transgender students in facilities corresponding to their gender identity did not violate Title IX, as appellants claimed. In fact, we argued, Title IX requires the School District to continue its trans-inclusive policy because the alternative — a policy that segregates students only by biology-based, assigned sex — would discriminate against transgender students.
This ruling is especially welcome given the onslaught of recent attempts to roll back the rights of transgender people from the Trump Administration.
Read our brief here and case background here.
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