The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Tuesday denied a request from West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and officials from other states for all 15 of the court's judges to rehear a case concerning whether a Virginia transgender student can use the boys' restroom at his high school.
On April 19, a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit ruled in favor of the teenager from Gloucester County, Virginia. According to the court, the student had a "biological sex" of female, but he had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, which the court described as a "medical condition characterized by clinically significant distress caused by an incongruence between a person's gender identity and the person's birth-assigned sex."
That ruling set precedent for West Virginia, which also is part of the Fourth Circuit.
"Now that the Fourth Circuit's decision is final, I hope my school board will finally do the right thing and let me go back to using the boys' restroom again," Gavin Grimm, the Virginia student, said in a news release from the American Civil Liberties Union. "Transgender kids should not have to sue their own school boards just for the ability to use the same restrooms as everyone else."
"The April ruling marked the first time a federal appeals court has determined Title IX protects the rights of transgender students to use sex-segregated facilities that are consistent with their gender identity," the ACLU stated.
As legal disagreements continue over whether transgender students should be allowed to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity, some West Virginia school systems have expressed reluctance to take a stand on the politically divisive issue.
Last month, Morrisey sent letters to West Virginia's school boards, denouncing as "unlawful" federal guidance saying public schools must permit transgender students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity.
In those May 18 letters, he wrote that the Virginia case "did not address the legality of a federal edict as sweeping as" the guidance, but also said that his office "led nine States in a brief filed last week supporting further review by all fifteen judges on that court."
Morrisey has also filed a lawsuit - alongside Maine's governor and attorneys general from nine other states - opposing the federal guidance.
In an emailed statement, Morrisey spokesman Curtis Johnson noted that one judge on the Fourth Circuit had dissented and urged a full review before the U.S. Supreme Court.
"Our office, like Judge [Paul] Niemeyer, urges Gloucester County to appeal its case to the Supreme Court. We also remain steadfast in challenging the federal government's unlawful directive that seeks to upend local control of schools and sidestep Congress' authority to set policy," Johnson wrote.
Reach Ryan Quinn at ryan.quinn@wvgazettemail.com, facebook.com/ryanedwinquinn, 304-348-1254 or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.