SCHOOL BOARD TO GO ON RECORD SUPPORTING TRANSGENDER STUDENT IN VIRGINIA CASE

Gavin Grimm

Among the items on the school board agenda tonight is a resolution that puts the board on record supporting a transgender student in Virginia whose opposition to his high school's anti-transgender policy is going to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Gavin Grimm, who identifies as male, attends the local high school in Gloucester, Va., according to an ACLU story on the case. It says he has been treated for severe gender dysphoria and informed the school that he would attend as a male at the start of his sophomore year in the fall of 2014.

But in December of that year, a new policy was instituted barring his use of the male restroom. He sued and the district court dismissed his suit, but he won on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in August 2016.  The local school district in Virginia has since appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has agreed to hear the case in 2017. 

The South Orange Maplewood school board will consider the supportive resolution at tonight's meeting, set for 7:30 p.m. in the Columbia High School auditorium. It would formally join the school board in the Amicus Brief for Grimm.

The move comes just months after the board adopted a very broad transgender-rights policy for the district.