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United States Supreme Court Refuses to Review Transgender Bathroom Case from Boyertown, Pennsylvania

Posted on: May 28th, 2019 by Art Leonard No Comments

The Supreme Court announced on May 28 that it will not review a decision by the Philadelphia-based 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, which had rejected a constitutional and statutory challenge by cisgender students at Boyertown (Pennsylvania) Senior High School, who were upset that the School District decided to let transgender students use facilities consistent with their gender identity.  Doe v. Boyertown Area School District & Pennsylvania Youth Congress Foundation, 897 F.3d 518 (3rd Cir. 2018), cert. denied, 2019 WL 2257330 (May 28, 2019).

The federal lawsuit stemmed from a decision in 2016 by the School District to permit transgender students to use restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity.  Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and local attorneys affiliated with the Independence Law Center in Harrisburg filed suit on behalf of several cisgender students, proceeding under pseudonyms, contending that this decision violated their rights on three theories: constitutional right of bodily privacy under the 14th Amendment, creation of a “hostile environment” in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which bans sex discrimination by schools that get federal funds, and violation of the right of privacy under Pennsylvania state common law.  Upon filing their complaint, the plaintiffs asked U.S. District Judge Edward G. Smith (E.D. Pa.) to issue a preliminary injunction to block the school district’s policy while the case was pending.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and the ACLU’s National LGBT Rights Project joined the case, representing the Pennsylvania Youth Congress Foundation, which intervened as a co-defendant to help the School District defend its policy.

This case is part of a national campaign by ADF to preserve and defend restrictions on restroom and locker room use by transgender students, part of ADF’s overall goal – consistent with the Trump Administration’s anti-transgender policies – to deprive transgender people of any protection under federal law.  So far, ADF has lost a succession of “bathroom” cases, and the 3rd Circuit’s ruling in this case was one of its most notable defeats.  At the same time, however, the Education Department under the leadership of Trump’s appointee, Betsy De Vos, has reversed the Obama Administration’s policy and now refuses to investigate discrimination claims by transgender students under Title IX, leaving it up to individuals to file lawsuits seeking protection under the statute.

Judge Smith refused to issue the requested preliminary injunction on August 25, 2017, 276 F. Supp. 3d 324, writing an extensive decision that concluded that the plaintiffs were unlikely to prevail on the merits of any of their theories, and that mere exposure to transgender students was not going to impose an irreparable injury on them anyway.   Judge Smith was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2013, but it was noteworthy that at his Senate confirmation vote, he received more votes from Republican Senators than Democratic Senators.

Plaintiffs appealed to the 3rd Circuit, and suffered a loss before a unanimous three judge panel, which issued its decision on June 18, 2018.  The opinion was written by Circuit Judge Theodore McKee, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton.  The other judges on the panel were Circuit Judge Patty Shwartz, who was appointed by President Obama to fill the vacancy created by Circuit Judge Marion Trump Barry, President Trump’s sister, when she took senior status; and Senior Circuit Judge Richard Nygaard, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan.

Judge McKee’s opinion set the stage with an extended discussion of gender identity based on the expert testimony offered by defendants in opposition to the motion for preliminary relief, including a much-cited amicus brief by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, which stated that policies excluding transgender students from “privacy facilities” consistent with their gender identities “have detrimental effects on the physical and mental health, safety, and well-being of transgender individuals.”  Judge McKee also quoted from an amicus brief filed by National PTA and Gay-Lesbian-Straight Education Network (GLSEN), that forcing transgender students to use bathrooms or locker rooms that don’t match their gender identity causes “severe psychological distress often leading to attempted suicide.”  In other words, the starting point for the court’s discussion was that the School District’s policy was responding to a serious problem faced by transgender students.

The court noted that as part of its policy the School District had renovated its “privacy facilities” to increase the privacy of individual users, and had provided single-user restrooms open to any student so that students who did not want to share facilities with others because of their gender identity would not be forced to do so.   The District also required that students claiming to be transgender meet with counselors trained to address the issue, and go through a process of being approved to use facilities consistent with their gender identity.  “Once a transgender student was approved to use the bathroom or locker room that aligned with his or her gender identity,” wrote Judge McKee, “the student was required to use only those facilities,” although any student was allowed to use the single-user restrooms.  “The student could no longer use the facilities corresponding to that student’s birth sex.”

The plaintiffs claimed that their right to privacy was violated because the school’s policy permitted them to be viewed by members of the opposite sex while partially clothed.  The 3rd Circuit found that Judge Smith “correctly found that this would not give rise to a constitutional violation because the School District’s policy served a compelling interest – to prevent discrimination against transgender students – and was narrowly tailored to that interest.”  The court pointed out that privacy rights under the Constitution are not absolute.  Furthermore, wrote McKee, “the School District’s policy fosters an environment of inclusivity, acceptance, and tolerance,” and that, as the National Education Association’s amicus brief “convincingly explains, these values serve an important educational function for both transgender and cisgender students.”

While the court empathized with cisgender students who experienced “surprise” at finding themselves “in an intimate space with a student they understood was of the opposite biological sex” – an experience specifically evoked in the plaintiffs’ brief in support of their motion – the court said, “We cannot, however, equate the situation the appellants now face with the very drastic consequences that the transgender students must endure if the school were to ignore the latter’s needs and concerns.”  And, the court pointed out, cisgender students “who feel that they must try to limit trips to the restroom to avoid contact with transgender students can use the single-user bathrooms in the school.”  The court rejected plaintiffs’ argument that the best solution to the issue was to require transgender students to use the handful of single-user restrooms, finding that this would “significantly undermine” the District’s compelling interest in treating transgender students in a non-discriminatory manner.

The court also pointed out that the plaintiffs’ privacy arguments sought to push that doctrine far beyond anything supported by existing case law. The court rejected analogies to cases involving inappropriate strip searches and peeping toms.  “Those cases involve inappropriate conduct as well as conduct that intruded into far more intimate aspects of human affairs than here.  There is simply nothing inappropriate about transgender students using the restrooms or locker rooms that correspond to their gender identity” under the School District’s policy, insisted the court, which also found that the “encounters” described by the plaintiffs did not involve transgender students doing “anything remotely out of the ordinary” while using the “privacy facilities” at the school.

As a result of these findings, the court concluded that the plaintiffs were unlikely to succeed on the merits of their privacy claims under Title IX, the Constitution, or Pennsylvania tort law.  Further, looking to “hostile environment sex discrimination” claims under Title IX (and the more developed hostile environment case law under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which covers employment discrimination and serves as a resource for courts interpreting Title IX), the court found that the possibility of encountering transgender students in a restroom failed to meet the high test set by the courts of “sexual harassment that is so severe, pervasive, or objectively offensive and that so undermines and detracts from the victims’ educational experience that he or she is effectively denied equal access to an institution’s resources and opportunities.”  The possibility of occasionally encountering one of a handful of transgender students in a “privacy facility” fell far short of meeting that test.

Furthermore, the court found that the District’s policy was “sex-neutral” in that it applied to everybody, and asserted that plaintiffs had not “provided any authority” for the proposition that a “sex-neutral policy” would violate Title IX.  “The School District’s policy allows all students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity,” wrote McKee. “It does not discriminate based on sex, and therefore does not violate Title IX.”

The court drew support for its conclusion from the Chicago-based 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Ash Whitaker’s lawsuit against the Kenosha, Wisconsin, school district, where the court found that excluding a transgender boy from using the boys’ restroom facilities did violate Title IX.  See Whitaker v. Kenosha Unified School District No. 1 Board of Education, 858 F.3d 1034 (7th Cir. 2017). Consistent with that ruling, the Boyertown School District’s policy could be seen as mandated by its obligation under Title IX to provide equal educational access and opportunities to transgender students.  The court also noted transgender rights rulings by the 1st, 6th, 9th and 11th Circuits, concluding that anti-transgender discrimination in a variety of contexts violates federal laws forbidding sex discrimination.  There is an emerging consensus among federal courts of appeals along these lines.  The validity of this reasoning will be up for Supreme Court debate next Term when the Court reviews the 6th Circuit’s decision in favor of Aimee Stephens, the transgender employment discrimination plaintiff in the Harris Funeral Homes case, to be argued in the fall.

The plaintiff’s petition to the Supreme Court to review the Boyertown decision posed two questions to the Court: “Whether a public school has a compelling interest in authorizing students who believe themselves to be members of the opposite sex to use locker rooms and restrooms reserved exclusively for the opposite sex, and whether such a policy is narrowly tailored,” and “Whether the Boyertown policy constructively denies access to locker room and restroom facilities under Title IX ‘on the basis of sex.’”  These questions were phrased by ADF to incorporate its religiously-based beliefs seeking to discredit the reality of transgender existence, similar to attempts by the Trump Administration in its proposed regulations and policy statements.  If the Court had been tempted to grant this petition, it would likely have reworded the “Questions Presented,” as it pointedly did when it granted ADF’s petition to review the Harris Funeral Homes decision on April 22.

Although the decision not to review a court of appeals case does not constitute a ruling on the merits by the Supreme Court and does not establish a binding precedent on lower courts, it sends a signal to the lower courts, the practicing bar, and the parties.  In this case, the signal is important for school districts to hear as they try to navigate between the rulings by courts in favor of transgender student claims and the Trump Administration’s reversal of Obama Administration policy on this issue.  The question whether Title IX mandates the Boyertown School District’s access policy was not squarely before the Court in this case, and the justices may have denied review because they were already committed to consider whether federal sex discrimination laws cover gender identity discrimination in the Harris Funeral Homes case.

The Court normally provides no explanation why it grants or denies a petition for review although, interestingly, in another announcement on May 28, the Court did provide such a rare explanation in Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, 2019 WL 2257160 (Sup. Ct., May 28, 2019).  In Box, the Court denied review of a decision by the 7th Circuit striking down on constitutional grounds an Indiana law that prohibits health care providers from providing abortions that are motivated solely by the sex, race or disability of the fetus, stating: “Only the Seventh Circuit has thus far addressed this kind of law.  We follow our ordinary practice of denying petitions insofar as they raise legal issues that have not been considered by additional Courts of Appeals.”  The implication for the Boyertown case is that the 3rd Circuit opinion may have been denied review because it was the only federal appeals court ruling to address the precise question before the Court.

Third Circuit Rejects Challenge to Pennsylvania School District’s Policy Allowing Transgender Students to Use Facilities Consistent with Their Gender Identities

Posted on: May 26th, 2018 by Art Leonard No Comments

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit took the unusual step on May 24 of announcing about an hour after hearing oral argument that it would unanimously affirm U.S. District Judge Edward G. Smith’s ruling from last summer denying a motion for a preliminary injunction by a group of parents and students seeking to stop the Boyertown (Pennsylvania) Area School District from continuing to implement a policy allowing transgender students to use locker rooms and bathrooms corresponding to their gender identities. Doe v. Boyertown Area School District, 2018 WL 2355999 (3rd Cir., May 24, 2018), affirming 276 F. Supp. 2d 324 (E.D. Pa., August 25, 2017).

Later that day, the court issued a brief “Judgement” written by Circuit Judge Theodore A. McKee, so brief that it can be quoted in full here: “We agree Plaintiffs have not demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits and that they have not established that they will be irreparably harmed if their Motion to Enjoin the Boyertown School District’s policy is denied. We therefore Affirm the District Court’s denial of a preliminary injunction substantially for the reasons that the Court explained in its exceptionally well-reasoned Opinion of August 25, 2017.  A formal Opinion will follow. The mandate shall issue forthwith.  The time for filing a petition for rehearing will run from the date that the Court’s formal opinion is entered on the docket.”  There was some suggestion in press reports that after hearing argument the court was concerned that the affirmance be effective immediately, since the school year would shortly end.

This is one of several similar cases filed around the country by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), an organization formed to advance the freedom of Christians to assert the primacy of their beliefs over any conflicting obligations imposed by law. ADF is a staunch opponent of LGBT rights, battled on the ramparts to oppose marriage equality and to support the ability of businesses operated by Christians to refuse to sell their goods and services for same-sex weddings.  ADF has inserted itself into the “bathroom wars” by filing lawsuits on behalf of parents and allegedly cisgender students who oppose allowing transgender students to use single-sex facilities consistent with their gender identities.  When Judge Smith issued his decision last August, a federal magistrate judge in Illinois, Jeffrey T. Gilbert, had issued a report and recommendation to U.S. District Judge Jorge L. Alonso, which recommended denying ADF’s motion for a preliminary injunction against a similar school district policy in Students & Parents for Privacy v. United States Department of Education, 2016 WL 6134121 (N.D. Ill., Oct. 18, 2016), and Judge Smith cited and relied on Judge Gilbert’s analysis at various points in his decision.  Judge Alonso subsequently adopted Judge Gilbert’s Report and Recommendations, over the objections of ADF, on December 29, 2017, in Students & Parents for Privacy v. United States Department of Education, 2017 WL 6629520.

The plaintiffs in the Boyertown case argued three legal theories: first, that the district’s policy violates the constitutional privacy rights of non-transgender students under the 14th Amendment; second, that the school district’s policy violates Title IX’s requirement, as fleshed out in Education Department regulations, to provide separate restroom and locker room facilities for boys and girls; and third, that the policy violates Pennsylvania’s common law tort of invasion of privacy by intruding on the right of seclusion of non-transgender students.  Judge Smith found that the record compiled by the parties in response to the plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction showed that the plaintiffs were unlikely to prevail on any of these claims.  The bulk of his lengthy opinion (which runs 83 pages, including about six pages of headnotes, in Lexis) is devoted to a careful delineation of the factual record upon which he based his legal analysis.

Judge Smith explored each of the three theories at length, rejecting ADF’s argument that high school students have some sort of fundamental constitutional right not to share restroom facilities with transgender students because of the possibility that a transgender student would see them in their underwear, and noting particularly that factual allegations by individual plaintiff students who had found themselves in restrooms with transgender students showed that even if such a “right” existed, it had not been violated in any instance.

As to the Title IX argument, plaintiff insisted that allowing transgender students to use the restrooms created a “hostile environment” for the non-transgender students, but Judge Smith, recurring to Judge Gilbert’s ruling in the Illinois case, observed that “the School District treats both male and female students similarly,” undercutting the argument that the District is discrimination in education opportunity “because of” the sex of the individual plaintiff students.   “The practice applies to both the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms and bathrooms,” wrote Smith, “meaning that cisgender boys potentially may use the boys’ locker room and bathrooms with transgender boys and cisgender girls potentially may use the girls’ locker room and bathrooms with transgender girls.  In addition, with regard to the transgender students, both transgender boys and transgender girls are treated similarly insofar as they, upon receiving permission from the School District, may use the locker rooms and bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity.  Moreover, the School District is not discriminating against students regarding the use of alternative facilities if students are uncomfortable with the current practice insofar as those facilities are open to all students who may be uncomfortable using locker rooms or multi-user facilities… The School District’s similar treatment of all students I fatal to the plaintiffs’ Title IX claim.”  Concluding on the Title IX point, Judge Smith wrote, “The plaintiffs have failed to cite to any case holding that a plaintiff can maintain a sexual harassment hostile environment claim when the allegedly sexually harassing party treats all individuals similarly and there is, as such, no evidence of gender/sex animus.”  Simply put, the District was not “targeting” any student for particular adverse treatment because of his or her sex.  Judge Smith also pointed out that the law of “hostile environment” as it has been developed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to which courts refer in Title IX cases, sets a very high evidentiary bar for establishing a hostile environment, which he concluded could not be met by the plaintiffs’ factual allegations in this case.

As to the tort of invasion of privacy claim, Judge Smith noted that there were no allegations that any of the named defendants had personally invaded the privacy of any of the plaintiffs, as the plaintiffs’ factual allegations all related to two transgender students, identified as Student A and Student B, whose presence in locker rooms or restrooms was the subject of individual plaintiffs’ angst. But, of course, Students A and B were only present in those facilities because the District’s policy allowed them to be.  “The court does not deny that an individual seeks seclusion in a bathroom toilet stall from being viewed by other people outside of the stall,” wrote Judge Smith, pointing out that the cases cited by the plaintiffs in support of their common law privacy claims “involve alleged invasions of privacy in bathroom stalls,” usually involving police surveillance of public restrooms.  “Here,” Smith pointed out, “there are no allegations and the plaintiffs presented no evidence that any transgender student invaded their seclusion while they were in a bathroom stall.  And similarly, although the plaintiffs indicate that viewing a person while in a bathroom would be ‘considered “highly offensive” by any reasonable person,’ the case cited involved an intrusion into a single bathroom stall and not the presence of someone in the common area of a multi-user facility.”  After noting how the plaintiffs’ factual allegations about particular incidents involving transgender students in restrooms fell short of supporting the plaintiffs’ contentions about unwanted exposure of their bodies, Smith wrote, “the court does not find that a reasonable person would be offended by the presence of a transgender student in the bathroom or locker room with them, despite the possibility that the transgender student could possibly be in a state of undress more significant than Student A was in this case when the male plaintiffs same him.”  He concluded similarly regarding the other incidents described by the plaintiffs, and concluded they had not shown a likelihood that they would be able to establish liability under Pennsylvania’s invasion of privacy tort.

That could be the end of Smith’s analysis, since a finding that plaintiffs are likely to prevail would be necessary to ground a preliminary injunction against the District’s policy, but Smith, to be thorough, analyzed the irreparable harm factor that courts consider, concluding that because the District was providing single-user alternatives the individual plaintiffs would not be irreparable harmed if the policy was allowed to continue in effect. He concluded as well that because these two factors weighed against granting the injunction, there was no need to perform the “balance of harms” analysis that would necessarily follow if the plaintiffs had prevailed on the first two factors.

As noted above, the 3rd Circuit’s brief Judgement issued on May 24 described Judge Smith’s opinion as “exceptionally well-reasoned,” so it is likely that the “formal opinion” to follow will run along similar lines and probably quote liberally from Judge Smith.  Also, it would not be surprising were the court of appeals to give persuasive weight to decisions from other courts ruling on claims by transgender students to a right under Title IX and the 14th Amendment to use facilities consistent with their gender identity.  In the course of deciding those cases, the courts necessarily considered the same factual and legal issues presented by the Parents & Students cases.  In light of the judicial rulings so far in these “bathroom wars” cases, a consensus seems to have emerged in the federal judiciary that is part of a larger movement in the law in the direction of recognizing transgender civil rights claims under both the Equal Protection Clause in constitutional law and the statutory bans on discrimination because of sex.

In addition to ADF’s attorneys and the attorneys defending the school district, the court heard from ACLU attorneys representing the interests of transgender students in the Boyertown School District, including lead attorney Leslie Cooper with the ACLU LGBT Rights Project, lead attorney Mary Catherine Roper with the ACLU of Pennsylvania, and cooperating attorneys from Cozen O’Connor, a Philadelphia law firm.

 

Federal Court Refuses to Enjoin School District from Allowing Transgender Students to Use Facilities Consistent With Their Gender Identity

Posted on: September 1st, 2017 by Art Leonard No Comments

After rendering a bench ruling in mid-August in anticipation of the approaching resumption of school for the fall semester, U.S. District Judge Edward G. Smith released a lengthy opinion (running over 75 pages in LEXIS) on August 25, explaining why he was denying a preliminary injunction motion by plaintiffs in Doe v. Boyertown Area School District, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 137317, 2017 WL 3675418 (E.D. Pa.), in which the plaintiffs, cisgender students and their parents, sought to block the school district’s unwritten policy of allowing transgender students to use bathroom and changing room facilities consistent with their gender identity.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a non-profit law firm self-identified with conservative Christian principles which has filed similar lawsuits against other school districts, represents the plaintiffs in arguing that constitutional and common law privacy rights of the students are violated by the school district’s policy. In addition to local attorneys representing the school district, intervenors on behalf of defendants are represented by attorneys from the ACLU’s LGBT Rights Project and ACLU of Pennsylvania with cooperating attorneys from Cozen O’Connor’s New York and Philadelphia offices.

This case presents in many respects a mirror image of the lawsuits brought by transgender teens seeking the right to use bathroom and changing facilities at their high schools consistent with their gender identity. In both kinds of cases, testimony is presented that the plaintiffs have suffered emotional and physical harm because the schools’ usage policy interferes with their ability to use a convenient, non-stigmatizing restroom when they need it.  In this case, cisgender students affirmed that they were so traumatized at the prospect of encountering a “student of the other sex” – as they insist on calling transgender students – in the restroom or locker room, that they avoid using the facilities altogether during the school day, and the fear of such encounters haunts them throughout the day.  The court rejected the underlying premise, because Boyertown Area High School (referred to by the acronym BASH throughout the opinion) has provided numerous single-user facilities and alternative locations that would accommodate the plaintiffs’ concerns, and has made physical alterations in the common facilities to enhance the ability of individuals to avoid exposing themselves unclothed (fully or partially) to other students.  The plaintiffs’ position is to argue that transgender boys are really girls, and transgender girls are really boys, and the traditional of sex-segregated restroom and locker-room facilities most be preserved in order to protect the long-recognized privacy interests of cisgender people.  But to the court, the issue for decision in August 2017 had to be based on the facilities available for the upcoming academic year, as to which alterations and additions have changed the situation since the incidents during the 2016-17 school year that gave rise to the lawsuit.

The court sets out the factual allegations in great detail, including findings that this writer – having attended high school in the 1960s – found startling, such as a finding that few of the students at the high school actually use the showers after their gym classes. (When this writer attended high school, showering after gym was mandatory and closely monitored by the coaches, and the required freshman swimming course at his college prohibited students in the class from wearing anything in the pool.)  Another startling finding: that the high school, even before the recent renovations, had several single-user restrooms available to students, and not just in the nurse’s and administrative offices, so that any student seeking absolute privacy for their restroom needs could easily avail themselves of such facilities.

This lawsuit can be traced to several instances during the Fall Semester of 2016 when plaintiffs claim to have been startled, abashed, and disturbed to discover students whom they considered to be of the opposite sex in the locker room or restroom, leading them to approach administrators to complain and subsequently to involve their parents in further complaints. The transgender students were in these facilities after having obtained permission from school administrators who had determined that the students had sufficiently transitioned to make it appropriate. The administrators were determining, on a case-by-case basis, the students in question had transitioned sufficiently that it would have been awkward, unsettling, and perhaps even dangerous to them for them to use facilities consistent with the sex originally noted on their birth certificates.

The evidence presented to the court was that transgender students went through a transitional facilities usage period as they were transitioning in their gender presentation, generally preferring the single-user facilities until their transition was far enough along that they would feel more comfortable using facilities consistent with their gender expression and expected their presence would not cause problems. Indeed, there was testimony that when one transgender boy went into the girls’ restroom, he was chased out by the girls, who perceived him a boy and didn’t want him in there! Because surgical transition is not available under established standards of care before age 18, none of the transgender students at the high school had genital surgery, so their transitions were based on puberty-blocking drugs, hormones, grooming and dress.  One suspects that parents particularly objected to the presence of transgender girls who still had male genitals in the girls’ facilities, but there were no allegations that any transgender girl was exposing male genitals to the view of others in the common facilities.

When the issue arose and the administrators had to respond to a handful of protesting students and parents, they had long since received the “Dear Colleague” letter sent out by the Obama Administration’s Education and Justice Departments in May 2016, which advised that Title IX required public schools to accommodate transgender students by allowing them to use restrooms consistent with their gender identity and presentation. The Boyertown administrators, who did not seek authorization from the school board prior to problems arising, treated that letter as “the law of the land” and informally extended approval on a case-by-case basis to transgender students seeking permission to use appropriate facilities, a phenomenon which began to surface in that school district prior to the 2016 school year.  Not only did they refrain from adopting a formal written policy, but they also refrained from announcing the school’s policy to the student body or parents generally.  Thus, it is not surprising that some students were startled to encounter students who they considered to be of the “wrong sex” in their facilities.  The response of the administrators to the complaints was the this was the school’s policy and the students should just treat the situation as natural and adjust to it, which some students and their parents found unacceptable.

After the issue blew up during the 2016-2017 school year, the board of education voted 6-3 to back up the administrators, but there was still no formal written policy, and the school actually refused a demand by some parents to produce a written policy. Although the Trump Administration “withdrew” the Obama Administration’s interpretation of Title XI, the substitute letter issued in 2017 did not take a firm position on whether Title IX required such accommodations, merely asserting that the matter required further “study” and should be left to state and local officials to decide.  The Boyertown administrators decided to continue the policy they were following.  This lawsuit was first filed in March 2017, with an amended complaint adding more plaintiffs on April 18.

The complaint asserted claims under the 14th Amendment, Title IX, and Pennsylvania common and statutory law (the Public School Code, which mandates that public schools provide separate facilities for boys and girls).  They claimed a substantive due process violation (privacy), hostile environment sex discrimination in violation of Title IX, and Pennsylvania common law invasion of privacy in violation of public policy.

Judge Smith’s opinion thoroughly dissects the plaintiff’s arguments and carefully distinguishes the cases they cite as precedents, taking the perspective that the issue in deciding the motion for preliminary injunction is whether to preserve the status quo (the school district’s current policy of allowing transgender students, with permission given on a case-by-case basis depending upon their stage of transition and gender presentation, to the use the facilities with which they are comfortable), or to upset the status quo by requiring transgender students to restrict themselves to using single-user facilities or those consistent with their sex as identified at birth. There is a strong bias in considering preliminary injunctions in favor of preserving the status quo, so the plaintiffs had a heavy burden to persuade the court that they were likely to prevail on the merits of their claim in an ultimate ruling, and that the status quo policy inflicted real harm on them that would outweigh the harm that halting the policy would impose on the transgender students and the district.  As to both of those issues, Judge Smith found that plaintiffs had failed to make their case.

In particular, the school’s alteration and expansion of its facilities had significantly undermined the privacy arguments, and the court easily rejected the contention that the possibility of encountering one of about half a dozen transgender students in a high school with well over a thousand students had created a “hostile environment” for cisgender students. The court also noted that the common law privacy precedents concerned situations where the individual defendants had physically invaded the private space of the plaintiffs.  In this case, the individual defendants are school administrators, none of whom had personally invaded the private space of students using restroom and locker room facilities.

Judge Smith devoted a substantial portion of his opinion to recounting expert testimony, presenting a virtual primer on the phenomena of gender identity, gender dysphoria, and transition from a medical and social perspective. The opinion clearly and strongly rejects the plaintiffs’ argument that this case is about boys invading girls’ facilities or vice versa.  The tone and detail of the opinion reflect the considerable progress that has been made in educating courts and the public about these issues.

On the plaintiff’s likelihood of ultimately winning their case on the merits, Judge Smith pointed to the most definitive appellate ruling so far on the contested transgender bathroom issue, a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit involving a lawsuit by Ash Whitaker, a transgender student, against the Kenosha (Wisconsin) school district, which the school district asked the Supreme Court to review, coincidentally on the date that Judge Smith released this opinion.  No other federal circuit appeals court has issued a ruling on the merits of the constitutional and Title VII claims being put forth on this issue, although the 4th Circuit had in 2016 dictated deference to the Obama Administration’s interpretation in Gavin Grimm’s lawsuit against the Gloucester County (Virginia) school district, only to have that decision vacated by the Supreme Court last spring after the Trump Administration “withdrew” the Obama Administration’s “Dear Colleague” letter.  That case is still continuing, now focused on a judicial determination of the merits after the filing of an amended complaint by the ACLU.

Because ADF is on a crusade to defeat transgender-friendly facilities policies, it will most likely seek to appeal this denial of injunctive relief to the 3rd Circuit, which has yet to weigh in directly on the issue, although there are conflicting rulings by district courts within the circuit in lawsuits brought by transgender students.  ADF’s first step could be to seek emergency injunctive relief from the Circuit court and, failing that, the Supreme Court (which had during the summer of 2016 granted a stay of the preliminary injunction issued in the Grimm case).  If the Supreme Court grants the Kenosha school district’s petition, as seems likely, the underlying legal issues may be decided during its 2017-18 Term, before the Boyertown case gets to a ruling on the merits of plaintiffs’ claims.

Judge Smith was nominated to the district court by President Obama in 2013, winning confirmation from the Senate in 2014. A substantial part of his prior career involved service as a military judge, followed by a period of private practice and then service as a state court judge.  In his Senate confirmation vote he received more votes from Republicans than Democrats.  The Washington Post reported at the time that Smith was the first Obama judicial nominee to win more Republican than Democratic votes.