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Federal Court Rules for Gavin Grimm in Long-Running Virginia Transgender Bathroom Case

Posted on: August 10th, 2019 by Art Leonard No Comments

After more than four years of litigation, there is finally a ruling on the merits in Gavin Grimm’s transgender rights lawsuit against the Gloucester County (Virginia) School Board.  On August 9, U.S. District Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen granted Grimm’s motion for summary judgment, finding that the school district violated his rights under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by refusing to let the transgender boy use the boys’ restroom facilities while he was attending Gloucester High School and by refusing to update his official school transcript to conform to the “male” designation on his amended birth certificate.  Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board, 2019 WL 3774118 (E.D. Va., Aug. 9, 2019).

In addition to awarding Grimm a symbolic damage recovery of $1.00, the court issued a permanent injunction requiring the School Board to update Grimm’s official records and provide “legitimate copies of such records” to Grimm by August 19.  Judge Wright Allen also ordered that the Board “shall pay Mr. Grimm’s reasonable costs and attorneys’ fees” in an amount to be determined.  In light of the length and complexity of this lawsuit, the fee award is likely to be substantial.

Grimm began his freshman year at Gloucester High School in 2013 listed as a girl on enrollment papers, consistent with his original birth certificate.  During spring of his freshman year, Grimm told his parents that he was transgender and he began therapy with Dr. Lisa Griffin, a psychologist experienced in transgender issues, who diagnosed gender dysphoria and put the diagnosis in a letter that Grimm later presented to school officials.  Also in 2014, Grimm legally changed his first name to Gavin and began using the mens’ restrooms “in public venues.”  Prior to the beginning of his sophomore year at Gloucester High, he and his mother met with a school guidance counselor, provided a copy of Dr. Griffin’s letter, and requested that Grimm be treated as a boy at school.

They agreed that Grimm would use the restroom in the nurse’s office, but he found it stigmatizing and inconvenient, making him late for classes.  After a few weeks of this, he met with the guidance counselor and sought permission to use the boys’ restrooms.  The request went up to the school’s principal, Nate Collins, who conferred with the Superintendent of Schools, Walter Clemons, “who offered to support Principal Collins’ final decision,” according to testimony in the court record.  Collins then gave Grimm the go-ahead to use the boys’ bathrooms, which he did for seven weeks without any incident.  Grimm had been given permission to complete his phys ed requirement through an on-line course and never used the boys’ locker room at school.

Word that a transgender boy was using the boys’ restrooms got out in the community and stirred up opposition from “adult members of the community,” who contacted school officials to demand that Grimm be barred from using the boys’ rooms.  The School Board devoted two meetings to the issue, finally voting in December 2014 to adopt a formal policy that the use of restroom and locker room facilities “shall be limited to the corresponding biological genders, and students with gender identity issues shall be provided an alternative appropriate private facility.”

The Board announced that it would construct some single-sex unisex restrooms in the high school, but until then Grimm would have to use the restroom in the nurse’s office.  There eventually were such unisex restrooms, but they were not conveniently located for use between classes and Grimm ended up not using them, finding a requirement to use them as stigmatizing.  Instead, he tried to avoid urinating at school and developed urinary tract infections, as well as suffering psychological trauma.

Meanwhile, at the end of his sophomore year in June 2015, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles issued Grimm a state ID card identifying him as male.  When he need brief hospitalization to deal with thoughts of suicide during his junior year, he was admitted to the boys’ ward at Virginia Commonwealth University’s hospital.  In June 2016, he had top surgery, and on September 9, 2016, the Gloucester County Circuit Court ordered the Health Department to issue him a new birth certificate listing him as male, referring to his surgery as “gender reassignment surgery” even though it did not involve genital alteration.  In October 2016, Grimm presented a photocopy of his new birth certificate to the school, but they refused to update his records to reflect male status, and his transcripts still identify him as female.

Grimm, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), filed his lawsuit on June 11, 2015, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Norfolk.  The case was assigned to Senior District Judge Robert G. Doumar, who quickly granted the school district’s motion to dismiss the Title IX claim and reserved judgment on Grimm’s constitutional claim while Grimm appealed the dismissal.  The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the dismissal, relying on an interpretation of Title IX endorsed by the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice during the Obama Administration, and sent the case back to Judge Doumar, who issued a preliminary injunction on June 23, 2016, requiring the School Board to let Grimm use the boys’ restrooms.  Conveniently for the school board, this order came at the end of the school year, so they had several months of summer break to try to forestall having to let Grimm use the boys’ restroom when school resumed.  Although the 4th Circuit quickly turned down the Board’s motion to stay the injunction, an emergency application to the Supreme Court was granted on August 3, 2016, pending the filing of a petition for review by the School Board and guaranteeing that Grimm was unlikely to be able to use the boys’ restrooms during his senior year if review was granted by the Supreme Court.

Ultimately, the Board did filed its appeal, which was granted with argument set to take place in March 2017.  This timing would virtually guarantee that Grimm would not be able to use the boys’ restrooms at the high school before his graduation, since a case argued in March would not likely result in an opinion being issued until June.  Elections and fate intervened as well, as the new Trump Administration moved to “withdraw” the Obama Administration’s interpretation of Title IX, on which the 4th Circuit had relied.  The Solicitor General advised the Supreme Court of this withdrawal and the Court took the case off the hearing calendar and sent it back to the 4th Circuit, which in turn sent it back to the district court.  Judge Doumar having retired, the case was reassigned to Judge Wright Allen.

Since Grimm had graduated by then, the School Board argued that his request for injunctive relief was moot, as he would no longer be attending Gloucester High School. The ACLU countered that the question of the restroom policy’s lawfulness was not moot, that Grimm as an alumnus would be barred from using the boys’ restroom when he returned to the school for public events, that Grimm was still entitled to a ruling on his claim for damages.  The district court refused to dismiss the case, and discovery went forward.  Although the lawsuit had already been to the 4th Circuit twice and to the Supreme Court, there still had not been any ultimate ruling on the merits of the case at that point.

On May 22, 2018, Judge Wright Allen issued a ruling denying the School Board’s motion to dismiss the case as moot, and she ruled that Grimm had a viable claim of sex discrimination under Title IX.  She also ruled at that time that the constitutional equal protection claim would be decided using “intermediate scrutiny,” which puts to the government the burden to show that its policy substantially advances an important government interest.  On February 19, 2019, the court allowed Grimm to file a new amended complaint adding the issue of the School Board’s refusal to issue a corrected transcript.

On July 23, the court heard arguments on new motions for summary judgment filed by both parties.  These motions were decided by Judge Wright Allen’s August 9 ruling, which also rejected most of the School Board’s objections to various items of evidence offered by Grimm – mainly letters and medical records documenting his gender dysphoria diagnosis and subsequent treatment – which were incorrectly described by the School Board as “expert testimony” that was not admissible through discovery.  The court agreed to the school board’s argument that documents relating to failed settlement discussions should be excluded from consideration.

As to the merits of Grimm’s Title IX claim, the court found that Grimm had been excluded from participation in an education program on the basis of sex when the School Board adopted a policy that would bar him from using the boys’ restrooms at the high school, that the policy harmed Grimm both physically and psychologically, and that because the Gloucester schools receive federal financial assistance, they are subject to Title IX.   Consequently, summary judgment should be granted to Grimm on his Title IX claim.

As to the Equal Protection claim, the court relied on a Supreme Court ruling concerning the exclusion of girls from Virginia Military Institute, in which Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that in a sex-discrimination case involving “intermediate scrutiny,” the defendant bears the burden of “demonstrating that its proffered justification for its use of the classification is ‘exceedingly persuasive.’”  In this case, the Board’s justification was “an interest in protecting the privacy rights of students, specifically privacy interests that students have in protecting their unclothed bodies.”

Judge Wright Allen found that the Board had made “no showing that the challenged policy is ‘substantially related’ to protection of student privacy.”  She referred to the lack of any student complaints during the seven-week period that Grimm used the boys’ restrooms during his sophomore year and, she wrote, “The Board’s privacy argument also ignores the practical realities of how transgender individuals use a restroom.”  Common sense prevailed, as the judge quoted another trans bathroom court opinion: “When he goes into a restroom, the transgender student enters a stall, closes the door, relieves himself, comes out of the stall, washes his hands, and leaves.”

The Board’s witness at the summary judgment hearing, conceding that there was no privacy concern for other students when a transgender student walks into a stall and shuts the door, testified that “privacy concerns are implicated when students use the urinal, use the toilet, or open their pants to tuck in their shirts.  When asked why the expanded stalls and urinal dividers could not fully address those situations,” wrote the judge, “Mr. Andersen responded that he ‘was sure’ the policy also protected privacy interests in other ways, but that he ‘couldn’t think of any other off the top of his head.’  This court is compelled to conclude that the Board’s privacy argument ‘is based upon sheer conjecture and abstraction,’” this time referring to the 7th Circuit ruling in Ash Whitaker’s trans bathroom case.

Judge Wright Allen also pointed out that although trans high school students have not had genital surgery, if they are taking hormones they are developing secondary sex characteristics of the gender with which they identify.  “If exposure to nudity were a real concern,” she wrote, “forcing such a transgender girl to use male restrooms could likely expose boys to viewing physical characteristics of the opposite sex. From this perspective, the Board’s privacy concerns fail to support the policy it implemented.”

The court concluded that the School Board’s policy must be found unconstitutional, pointing out, in addition, that the Board’s refusal to change the gender indication on Grimm’s school records “implicates no privacy concerns.”  The Board had contended that there were some doubts about the validity of the new birth certificate, because the photocopy they were provided was marked “Void.”  This was explained away by testimony from the government official responsible for issuing the documents.  It seems that all but the original would be marked “Void,” and that Grimm has a valid, authentic birth certificate identifying him as male, which the School Board should have honored.

Judge Wright Allen acknowledged the difficult task the School Board faced in deciding how to proceed during the fall of 2014.  She wrote, “The Board undertook the unenviable responsibility of trying to honor expressions of concern advanced by its constituency as it navigated the challenges represented by issues that barely could have been imagined or anticipated a generation ago.  This Court acknowledges the many expressions of concern arising from genuine love for our children and the fierce instinct to protect and raise our children safely in a society that is growing ever more complex.  There can be no doubt that all involved in this case have the best interests of the students at heart.”  However, this was no excuse for imposing a discriminatory and unconstitutional policy on Grimm.

“However well-intentioned some external challenges may have been,” Wright Allen continued, “and however sincere worries were about possible unknown consequences arising from a new school restroom protocol, the perpetuation of harm to a child stemming from unconstitutional conduct cannot be allowed to stand.  These acknowledgements are made in the hopes of making a positive difference to Mr. Grimm and to the everyday lives of our children who rely upon us to protect them compassionately and in ways that more perfectly respect the dignity of every person.”

Grimm had long since disclaimed any demand for financial compensation for the injuries he suffered in violation of his statutory and constitutional rights, so the court awarded only nominal (symbolic) damages of $1.00, but it directed that the School Board issue a new, corrected transcript in ten days, and the parties will now haggle about the size of the award of attorney’s fees and costs, which should be substantial.

Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen, nominated to the court by President Barack Obama, was the first female African-American judge to serve in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia after she was unanimously confirmed by the Senate (96-0) in May 2011.  She had previously been the top Federal Public Defender in the Eastern District of Virginia, and was a former Assistant U.S. Attorney and a military judge.  Prior to this ruling, her most noteworthy decision, issued in February 2014, declared Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional.

 

Supreme Court Will Hear Title IX Transgender Discrimination Case and Case Challenging Social Media Restrictions on Sex Offenders

Posted on: October 30th, 2016 by Art Leonard No Comments

Supreme Court Will Hear Title IX Transgender Discrimination Case and Case Challenging Social Media Restrictions on Sex Offenders

The Supreme Court substantially enlivened its docket for the October 2016 Term on October 28 when it granted petitions for certiorari in Gloucester County School Board v. G.G., No. 16-273, and Packingham v. North Carolina, No. 15-1194.  In Gloucester, a school district in Virginia, obligated not to discriminate because of sex under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, seeks review of the 4th Circuit’s decision, 822 F.3d 709 (2016), holding that the district court should defer to the U.S. Department of Education’s interpretation of a regulation on restrooms in educational facilities, 34 C.F.R. Sec. 106.33, that would require the school to let a transgender boy use the boys’ restroom facilities at his high school.  In Packingham, the petitioner seeks to overturn the North Carolina Supreme Court’s decision, 368 N.C. 380, 777 S.E.2d 738 (2015), upholding his conviction for violating North Carolina’s rules governing registered sex offenders by posting a message on Facebook.com celebrating the dismissal of a traffic ticket.  Lester Packingham claims that the broad prohibition of his use of social media violates his 1st Amendment rights.

The Gloucester Case

The Gloucester case was closely watched by LGBT lawyers and legal commentators for presenting the Court with a vehicle to respond to the broader question of whether federal laws prohibiting discrimination “because of sex,” mostly passed many decades ago, can now be construed to forbid gender identity discrimination (and maybe, also, sexual orientation discrimination), despite the obvious lack of intent by the enacting legislators in the 1960s and 1970s to reach such discrimination.  That is, to recur to a question repeatedly raised by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, are we governed by the intentions of our legislators or by reasonable interpretations of the actual texts they adopted in their statutes, or that administrative agencies subsequently adopted in regulations intended to aid in the enforcement of the statutes?  Scalia, who was an ardent foe of using “legislative history” as a method of statutory interpretation, decisively argued that courts should focus on the language of the statute, not viewed in isolation of course but rather in the context of the overall statute (including any declaration of congressional purpose contained in it), and he won unanimous concurrence by his colleagues in Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U.S. 75 (1998), holding that a man employed in an all-male workplace could maintain an action for hostile environment sexual harassment under Title VII, even though it was unlikely that the enacting Congress in 1964 was thinking about same-sex harassment when it amended Title VII to add “sex” to the list of forbidden grounds for workplace discrimination.  Scalia wrote for the Court that we are governed by the statutory text, and thus Mr. Oncale could maintain his Title VII suit subject to his burden to prove that he was harassed “because of sex” as specified by the statute.  The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has prominently cited and quoted from Justice Scalia’s Oncale opinion in its federal employment rulings of recent years (Macy, Lusardi, Baldwin) holding that discrimination because of gender identity or sexual orientation is “necessarily” discrimination “because of sex,” even though the 1964 Congress would not necessarily have thought so.  Although Gloucester does not directly involve Title VII, federal courts have generally followed Title VII precedents when they interpret the sex discrimination ban in Title IX, as the 4th Circuit explained in this case.

The controversy arose when fellow students and their parents objected to Gavin Grimm, a transgender boy, using the boys’ restrooms during fall term of his sophomore year, in 2014. The principal of the high school had given Grimm permission to use the boys’ restrooms, after being presented with the facts about Grimm’s transition and his discomfort with continuing to use the girls’ restrooms, since he was dressing, grooming, and – most significantly – strongly identifying as male.  Responding to the complaints, the Gloucester County School Board voted to establish a policy under which students were required to use the restroom consistent with their “biological sex” – the sex identified on their birth certificate – or to use a gender-neutral restroom, of which there were a few in the high school.  Grimm was dissatisfied with this turn of events and enlisted the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Virginia to sue the school board in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, in Newport News.  The case was assigned to Senior U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar, who was appointed to the district court by President Ronald Reagan in 1981.  The plaintiff was identified in the original complaint as “G.G., by his next friend and mother, Deirdre Grimm,” but Gavin Grimm decided early on to be open about his role as plaintiff and has spoken publicly about the case.  The complaint relied on Title IX as well as the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Ruling on a motion for a preliminary injunction by the plaintiff and a motion to dismiss by the defendants on September 17, 2015, 132 F. Supp. 3d 736, Judge Doumar found that Grimm could not win a ruling on the merits of his Title IX claim because, in the judge’s view, Title IX regulations expressly allowed schools to maintain separate restroom facilities for boys and girls based on “sex,” and so it was not unlawful for them to require Grimm to use restrooms consistent with his “sex” which, in the school district’s view, was female. He rejected the ACLU’s claim that he should defer to the U.S. Department of Education’s interpretation of the “bathroom regulation,” which was articulated in a letter that the Department’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) sent in January 2015 as a “party in interest” in response to Grimm’s request for the Department’s assistance in his case.  OCR took the position, consistent with recent developments in sex discrimination law, that Grimm should be treated as a boy under the circumstances because it was undisputed that this was his gender identity, and thus under the regulation he was entitled to use the boy’s restroom, although he could also request as an accommodation to have access to gender-neutral facilities.   To Judge Doumar, the text of the regulation was clear and unambiguous, so the OCR’s attempt to ‘interpret’ the regulation in favor of Grimm’s claim was not entitled to deference from the court.  He wrote that deferring to the position articulated in the letter would allow OCR to “create a de facto new regulation.”   Doumar opined that if OCR wanted to change the regulation, it should go through the procedures set out in the Administrative Procedure Act, a time-consuming process that would result in a new or amended regulation that would then be subject to direct judicial review in the court of appeals.  As to the facts, Doumar referred to Grimm in his opinion as a “natal female” and seemingly was unwilling to credit the idea that for purposes of the law Grimm should be treated as a boy.  To Doumar, the case presented the simple question whether the school district had to let a girl use the boy’s restroom, and under the “clear” regulation the answer to that question was “No.”  While denying the preliminary injunction and dismissing the Title IX claim, Judge Doumar reserved judgment on the Equal Protection Claim.

Grimm appealed to the 4th Circuit, which reversed Judge Doumar in a 2-1 opinion on April 19, 2016.  Where Doumar saw clarity in the regulation, the 4th Circuit majority saw ambiguity, although a dissenting judge sided with Judge Doumar.  Although the regulation clearly said that schools could maintain separate restroom facilities for males and females, it said nothing directly about which restrooms transgender students could use, thus creating the ambiguity.  Unlike Judge Doumar, the 4th Circuit majority was unwilling to accept the School Board’s argument that a person’s sex is definitely established by their birth certificate.  The court took note of the developing case law in other circuits and in many district courts accepting the proposition that sex discrimination laws are concerned not just with genetic or “biological” sex but rather with the range of factors and characteristics that go into gender, including gender identity and expression.  Many federal courts (including several on the appellate level) have come to accept the proposition that gender identity and sex are inextricably related, that gender dysphoria and transgender identity are real phenomena that deeply affect the identity of people, and that transgender people are entitled to be treated consistent with their gender identity.  The court mentioned, in addition to the OCR letter, a December 2014 OCR publication setting forth the same view, which had been published on the Department of Education’s website.  Thus, the School District’s questioning of deference to an “unpublished letter” was not entirely factual, as the Department had previously published its interpretation on its website, and it was relying on an earlier ruling under Title VII by the EEOC in the Macy employment discrimination case, which was issued in 2012.

Having found that the regulation was ambiguous as to the issue before the court, the 4th Circuit relied on Auer v. Robbins, 519 U.S. 452 (1997), a Supreme Court decision holding that an agency’s interpretation of its own ambiguous regulation should be given controlling weight by the court unless the interpretation is “plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation or statute.”  In other words, a reasonable agency interpretation of an ambiguous regulation should be deferred to by the court.  The 4th Circuit panel majority went on to find that the requirements of Auer were met in this case, and remanded the matter to Judge Doumar to reconsider his ruling.  The court’s discussion made clear what direction the reconsideration should take and stressed urgency. Judge Doumar reacted with alacrity, issuing the requested preliminary injunction on June 23.  The School Board sought a stay, which was denied by both Judge Doumar and the 4th Circuit, which also denied a petition for rehearing en banc. With the new school year looming, and desperate to avoid having to let Grimm use the boys’ restrooms during his final year of high school, the School Board petitioned the Supreme Court for a stay of the preliminary injunction, which was granted on August 3 by a vote of 5-3.  See 136 S. Ct. 2442.  Justice Stephen Breyer, taking the unusual step of issuing a brief statement explaining why he had voted for the stay along with the four more conservative members of the Court; said it was an “accommodation.”  There was speculation at the time about what that meant.  In light of the October 28 vote to grant the School District’s petition for certiorari, it probably meant that the four conservatives had indicated they would likely vote to grant a petition for certiorari to review the 4th Circuit’s decision, so in Breyer’s view it made sense to delay implementing the injunction and to preserve the status quo, as the case would eventually be placed on the Court’s active docket for the October 2016 Term (which runs through June 2017).  Breyer was careful to refrain from expressing any view about the merits in his brief statement.  After the School Board filed its petition for certiorari on August 29, the case generated considerable interest, attracting more than a dozen amicus briefs in support or opposition to the petition, including briefs from many states and from members of Congress.  There will undoubtedly be heavy media interest when the parties file their merits briefs with the Court, accompanied by numerous amicus briefs on both sides of the case.

The School Board’s petition to the Court posed three questions, first asking whether the %Auer% doctrine, which some of the Justices have signaled a desire to overrule, should be reconsidered; second asking whether under the Auer doctrine “an unpublished agency letter that, among other things, does not carry the force of law and was adopted in the context of the very dispute in which deference is sought” merits deference; and third asking whether the Department’s interpretation of Title IX and the bathroom regulation should be “given effect”?  The Court granted the petition only as to the second and third questions, so there are not four members of the Court ready to reconsider Auer, at least in the context of this case.

The remaining questions give the Court different paths to a decision, one of which has minimal substantive doctrinal significance, while others could make this a landmark ruling on the possible application of federal sex discrimination statutes and regulations to discrimination claims by sexual minorities.

The Court might agree with the School Board that no deference is due to an agency position formulated in response to a particular case and expressed in an unpublished agency letter. This could result in a remand to the 4th Circuit for a new determination of whether Judge Doumar’s dismissal of the Title IX claim was correct in the absence of any need to defer to the agency’s interpretation, a question as to which the 4th Circuit majority has already signaled an answer in its discussion of the merits.

Alternatively, and more efficiently in terms of the development of the law, the Court could take on the substantive issue and decide, at the least, whether interpreting Title IX to extend to gender identity discrimination claims is a viable interpretation, in light of the Court’s seminal ruling in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228 (1989), that an employer’s use of sex stereotypes to the disadvantage of an employee’s promotion application was evidence of intentional discrimination because of sex.  It was that ruling that eventually led federal courts to conclude that because transgender people generally do not conform to sex stereotypes concerning their “biological” sex as determined at birth, discrimination against them is a form of “sex discrimination” in violation of such federal laws as the Fair Credit Act, the Violence Against Women Act, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.  The EEOC also relied on Price Waterhouse in reaching its conclusion that transgender plaintiffs could assert discrimination claims under Title VII, and the 6th and 11th Circuits have relied on it in finding that claims of gender identity discrimination by public employees should be treated the same as sex discrimination claims under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

Were the Supreme Court to rule by majority vote that laws banning discrimination “because of sex” also “necessarily” cover discrimination because of gender identity, rather than issuing a narrower ruling focusing solely on Title IX, one could plausibly assert that the inclusion of “gender identity” in the pending Equality Act bill would not be, strictly speaking, necessary in order to establish a federal policy against gender identity discrimination under all federal sex discrimination laws. But it is possible that the Court might write a more narrowly focused decision that would in some way be logically restricted to Title IX claims. At least one district court, in a case involving a transgender student at the University of Pittsburgh, suggested that there were significant enough differences between workplaces and educational institutions to merit a different approach under Title VII and Title IX, especially noting that many of the students affected by Title IX are not adults, while most people affected by Title VII are older, more experienced, and less susceptible to psychological injury in the realm of sexual development.  There was the suggestion that sexual privacy concerns in the context of an educational institution are different from such concerns in the context of an adult workplace.  The Supreme Court has generally preferred to decide statutory interpretation cases on narrow grounds, so it is possible that a merits decision in this case would not necessarily decide how other sex discrimination laws should be construed.

This case will most likely be argued early in 2017, and it may not be decided until the end of the Court’s term in June. Thus, it is possible that Gavin Grimm could win but never personally benefit as a student at Gloucester County’s high school, since he may have completed his studies before the final decision is issued.  But, of course, if he goes on to college, a winning decision would personally benefit him in being able to use men’s restrooms if he attends a college subject to Title IX – unless, given another complication of our times, he decides to attend a religious school that raises theological objections to letting him use such facilities and seeks to rely on the Hobby Lobby decision to avoid complying with Title IX.  We suspect, however, that his higher education would likely avoid that complication!

The Supreme Court has not granted as many petitions as usual thus far this fall, leading to speculation that it is trying to avoid granting review in cases where the justices might be predictably split evenly on the outcome and thus would not be able to render a precedential decision. If the Senate Republicans stand firm on their position that President Obama’s nominee for the vacant seat, U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Merrick Garland, will not be considered for confirmation, it is possible that the Court will have only eight justices when the Gloucester case is argued.  A tie vote by the Court would leave the 4th Circuit’s decision in place, but it would not be precedential outside of the 4th Circuit.  If a newly-elected president nominates a new candidate and the confirmation process takes the average time of several months, a new justice would probably not be seated in time to participate in deciding this case, unless the Court voted to hold it over for re-argument.  (In the past, the Court has sometimes held new arguments in cases that were heard when the Court was shorthanded.  This happened once when Justice Lewis Powell missed many arguments due to ill health, and his colleagues left it up to him whether to participate in those cases, in some instances by holding new arguments.)  This raises the possibility that Grimm’s graduation from high school might be found to have mooted the case, resulting in a dismissal on jurisdictional grounds.  This wouldn’t be an issue, of course, had the lawsuit been filed by DOE and the Justice Department, but where the plaintiff is an individual, his standing remains an issue throughout consideration of the case.

The Packingham Case

In the Packingham case, the North Carolina Supreme Court, reversing a decision by the state’s court of appeals, held that a state law restricting certain on-line social media use by all registered sex offenders was neither facially unconstitutional nor unconstitutional as applied to the defendant, Lester Gerard Packingham.  The North Carolina court, which divided 5-2 on the case, concluded that the statute was a regulation of conduct that incidentally affects freedom of speech, thus subject to heightened but not strict scrutiny, and that it survived such review due to the state’s important interest in protecting minors from sexual exploitation and to the measures taken by the legislature to narrow the scope of on-line communications that would be affected.

Packingham was convicted in 2002 of a sexual offense involving a minor. The opinion for the Supreme Court by Justice Robert H. Edmunds, Jr., does not specify the nature of the offense, but a reference in the dissenting opinion suggests it did not involve violence.  He did, however, have to register as a sex offender.  In 2008, the state legislature amended the sex offender registration law to make it a crime for a registered sex offender to “access a commercial social networking Web site where the sex offender knows that the site permits minor children to become members or to create or maintain personal Web pages on the commercial social networking Web site.”  The statute included a detailed definition of the characteristics of the kinds of sites that would be prohibited, and explicitly exempted various kinds of websites.  In effect, the ban is on sites where a registered sex offender might be able to identify and communicate directly with minors.  Sites that require individuals to be at least 18 years old in order to be members would not be affected by the ban, for example, and those that limited their services to things like commercial transactions for selling goods were also exempted.  After the law was passed, a written notice was sent to all registered sex offenders in the state advising of these new restrictions to which they must comply.  There was evidence in this case that Packingham received the notice.

In 2010 a Durham police officer began an investigation to determine whether any local registered sex offenders were violating the new law. His investigation uncovered the fact that Packingham was maintaining a facebook.com page under an assumed name and had posted messages to it, most recently a message celebrating his escape from traffic ticket liability.  The investigation did not, apparently, uncover any communications by Packingham to minors using facebook.com.  Packingham was indicted for violating the statute, and moved to dismiss the charges on 1st Amendment grounds.  The trial judge denied the motion, finding the statute constitutional as applied to Packingham while declining to rule on Packingham’s facial challenge to the statute, and he was convicted by a jury and sentenced to 6-8 months, suspended for a year while on probation.  Packingham appealed.  The court of appeals reversed, finding that the statute was unconstitutional on its face and as applied, too broadly sweeping in its effect on the free speech rights of registered sex offenders, and unduly vague.

The North Carolina Supreme Court totally rejected the court of appeals’ analysis. For one thing, the court found that the statute regulated conduct (the act of accessing the social media), not directly speech, although it clearly has an incidental effect on the ability of a sex offender to engage in speech activities using social media.  But the court decided that under the “heightened scrutiny” approach for evaluating regulations of conduct that incidentally affect speech, this statute survived because of the important state interest in protecting children, and the legislature’s care in tailoring the prohibition to focus on the kinds of social media where those so inclined could identify and communicate with minors.  The court concluded that this left open a wide variety of social media and other internet forums in which sex offenders were free to participate, and that the statute (and the notices to sex offenders) were written in such a way that somebody who sought to comply with the statute could determine which social media were off-limits.  Nobody disputed that accessing facebook.com was prohibited under this law, for example, and the court concluded that Packingham knew that facebook.com was off-limits for him, as reflected by his opening an account in an assumed name.  (What gave him away was that his photograph on the site matched the photographic depiction on his sex offender registration form.)  The court acknowledged that several similar laws in other states had been declared unconstitutionally, but sought to distinguish them as not being as fine-tuned as the North Carolina law in terms of the kinds of websites that were made off-limits.

The dissent was written by Justice Robin E. Hudson, joined by Justice Cheri Beasley. She disputed the majority’s conclusion that this was a regulation of conduct, but she determined that didn’t make much difference because she concluded that even under the standard of review used by the majority, the statute failed as overly broad and vague.  Restricting all sex offenders without regard to the nature of their offenses, for example, undercut the state’s justification of protecting minors.  Many people are required to register who committed offenses that do not involve minors, and who have no sexual interest in minors. Why, then, is the state restricting their 1st Amendment activities if its articulated justification for the restriction is to protect minors?  She also pointed out that there is no requirement that their offense leading to registration status involved using a computer, so why is their computer access being restricted?  Further, she contested the majority’s conclusion about how narrowly tailored the restriction is.  She pointed out that, literally applied, it could bar somebody from using amazon.com, because that website makes it possible for users to create profile pages including contact information facilitating communications between users with common interests.  Indeed, she pointed out that some websites allow minors to register with the approval of their parents.  One such is the largest circulation daily newspaper in North Carolina, so theoretically Packingham could be barred from accessing the newspaper on-line.  She argued that the law is both facially unconstitutional and unconstitutional as applied to Packingham.

In petitioning the Supreme Court for review, Packingham’s counsel wrote: “The statute singles out a subclass of persons, who are subject to criminal punishment based on expressive, associational, and communicative activities at the heart of the First Amendment, without any requirement that their activity caused any harm or was intended to.” The certiorari grant extends to the questions of whether the law is facially unconstitutional or just unconstitutional as applied to Packingham.  The case has the potential to bring into question numerous state laws that seek to regulate the expressive activities of sex offenders in the name of protecting minors.  Nobody argues that the state does not have a significant interest in protecting minors from sexual exploitation, or that the internet has created new opportunities for adults who are sexually interested in minors to locate and communicate with them.  At issue is how broadly such laws may sweep.  Should the laws pay more attention to the nature of sex offenses leading to registration in deciding whose activities should be restricted, and how narrowly tailored must the restrictions be to avoid subjecting individuals to long-term (even life-long in some cases) restrictions on their ability to use one of the main vehicles for communication in the 21st century without substantial justification for the limitation.  The petition was supported by an amicus brief from professors concerned with the law’s substantial burden they perceived on communicative freedom imposed by the statute.  Interestingly, N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper did not want to bother responding to the certiorari petition, and filed a waiver of the right to respond on April 6, but then was requested to respond after the amicus brief was filed, and ultimately filed a response on June 30.

The interests of LGBT people are significantly implicated by this dispute. Even after the Supreme Court declared in 2003 that laws against gay sex were not enforceable against individuals engaged in private, adult consensual activities, there is a not inconsiderable number of gay people, especially men, who are still affected by sex registration requirements in many states based on pre-2003 criminal convictions and continuing enforcement of laws involving solicitation, conduct in public, prostitution, and, of course, intergenerational sex.  Many offender registration laws sweep broadly encompassing a wide variety of activity that is not specifically protected under the U.S. Supreme Court’s Lawrence v. Texas ruling, and litigation is ongoing challenging the continued registration requirements imposed in some jurisdictions on people whose offender status is based on pre-Lawrence convictions for conduct that may no longer be criminalized.  In this connection it is notable that there are still several states that have not legislatively reformed their sex crimes laws to comply with the Lawrence ruling, as a result of which law enforcement officials continue to make arrests for constitutionally protected conduct.

 

Federal Court Explains Pretrial Motion Rulings Against Transgender Student in Restroom Lawsuit

Posted on: September 26th, 2015 by Art Leonard No Comments

U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar issued an opinion on September 17 in G. G. v. Gloucester County School Board, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 124905, 2015 WL 5560190 (E.D. Va.), explaining his earlier bench decision in July dismissing the plaintiff’s Title IX count and his September 4 denial of the plaintiff’s request for a preliminary injunction in a dispute over restroom usage at the Gloucester, Virginia, High School. The plaintiff, a transgender boy, is being denied use of the restrooms designated for boys at the school. Judge Doumar found that Title IX does not require public schools to allow transgender students to use the restrooms that conform to their gender identity, so long as they are provided with “comparable” restroom facilities, and that the plaintiff had not presented evidence sufficient to support his request to be allowed to use the boys’ restrooms pending a final ruling on the merits of his constitutional equal protection claim.

According to G.G.’s complaint, although designated female at birth he began to feel like a boy at “a very young age.” By age 12, he had acknowledged his male identity to himself and by the time he was a high school freshman “most of his friends were aware that he identified as male” and “away from home and school, G.G. presented himself as male.” During his freshman year, starting in September 2013, he experienced “severe depression and anxiety related to the stress of concealing his gender identity from his family.” He alleges that this led him to avoid school during the spring semester and to take classes “through a home-bound program.” In April of that 2014 spring semester, he finally told his parents that he was a transgender male and at his request began to see a psychologist, who diagnosed him with gender dysphoria. The psychologist recommended that G.G. “begin living in accordance with his male gender identity in all respects” including restroom usage, and gave him a “Treatment Documentation Letter” confirming the diagnosis and these directions, stating that he was under treatment. The psychologist also recommended that he begin hormone treatment. In July 2014, G.G. petitioned the local court for a legal name change, which was granted, and G.G. requested that his friends and family use his new name and refer to him using male pronouns. In public settings, G.G. began using restrooms designated for males.

In August 2014, prior to the beginning of fall semester, G.G. and his mother notified officials at Gloucester High School about his gender dysphoria and his name change. The high school officials were very accommodating, agreeing to change school records to record his new name. G.G. and his mother met with the principal and guidance counselor to discuss his transition. They allowed him to notify all his teachers about his preferences. “Being unsure how students would react to his transition,” wrote Doumar, “G.G. initially agreed to use a separate bathroom in the nurse’s office” and he was allowed to fulfill his physical education requirement through the home school program to avoid use of a locker room at school. But after the semester began G.G. “found it stigmatizing to use a separate restroom” and requested permission to use the male restrooms, which was granted by the principal. G.G. used the male restrooms for seven weeks, during which the School Board received protests from parents on behalf of their sons about G.G.’s use of the male restrooms.

A member of the School Board introduced a resolution that would limit use of restroom facilities to “the corresponding biological genders, and students with gender identity issues shall be provided an alternative appropriate private facility.” A majority of speakers at the November School Board meeting supported the resolution, contending that G.G.’s use of a male restroom violated the privacy rights of male students and might “lead to sexual assault in the bathrooms.” At least one parent suggested that a non-transgender boy could come to school wearing a dress and demand to use the girl’s restroom based on the precedent of letting G.G. use the men’s room. G.G. testified, speaking against the proposed resolution and “outing” himself to the entire community as transgender. The School Board voted 4-3 to defer a vote on the resolution to its next meeting, but prior to that meeting issued a news release indicating that steps were being taken to increase the privacy of all students by modifying the restrooms to expand partitions between urinals in the male restrooms and “adding privacy strips to the doors of stalls in all restrooms.” In addition, the school designated three single-stall unisex restrooms, “similar to what’s in many other public spaces.” At its December 9 meeting, the Board approved the resolution restricting restroom use by a vote of 6-1. The next day, the principal instructed G.G. not to use the boys’ restroom, threatening him with discipline if he violated the rule. He was allowed only to use the restroom in the nurse’s office, the girls’ restrooms, and the newly-designated unisex restrooms.

G.G. began receiving hormone treatments shortly after that School Board meeting, deepening his voice, increasing his facial hair and giving him a “more masculine appearance.” He claimed that as he was presenting as male, he was unwelcome on the girls’ restrooms; and that girls had actually asked him to leave when he tried to use those restrooms before this controversy arose. He also alleged that the unisex restrooms were not convenient to the rooms where his classes met,=, and that using them would be stigmatizing to him, causing psychological damage.

On June 11, 2015, G.G. filed suit alleging a violation of Title IX’s ban on sex discrimination in public schools and the equal protection clause, and requested a preliminary injunction to allow him to use the boys’ restrooms pending a final ruling on the merits of his claim. The School Board moved to dismiss the case. The U.S. Justice Department filed a statement of interest in the case, arguing that the Board’s resolution violated Title IX. The court heard initial arguments on the motions on July 27, and promptly dismissed the Title IX claim. In a subsequent hearing on September 4, the court denied the motion for preliminary injunction, promising to issue an explanatory opinion for both rulings at a later date.

Turning first to the Title IX claim, the court found that an existing Title IX regulation appeared to authorize the School Board’s restroom use policy. 34 C.F.R. Sec. 106.33 “expressly allows schools to provide separate bathroom facilities based upon sex, so long as the bathrooms are comparable,” Judge Doumar wrote, and he found that the regulation is not “arbitrary, capricious, or manifestly contrary to the statute.” Rather, he found, it “seems to effectuate Title IX’s provision allowing separate living facilities based on sex,” so he gave it controlling weight. Rejecting G.G.’s argument that Title IX should be construed to prohibit only gender identity discrimination as such, he said, “under any fair reading, ‘sex’ in Section 106.33 clearly includes biological sex. Because the School Board’s policy of providing separate bathrooms on the basis of biological sex is permissible under the regulation, the Court need not decide whether ‘sex’ in Section 106.33 also includes ‘gender identity’.” Judge Doumar found that G.G. had not alleged that the unisex facilities or the nurse’s restroom failed to satisfy the requirement of “comparable facilities” under the regulation, so no Title IX claim was stated.

The court had to deal as well with the Justice Department’s argument that the court should defer to a more recent interpretation by the Department of Education, which was issued in a January 7, 2015 “Guidance Letter” stating that students should be allowed to use restroom facilities consistent with their gender identity, which itself was based on an interpretive bulletin issued by DOE in December 2014. “The Department of Education’s interpretation does not stand up to scrutiny,” wrote the judge. “Unlike regulations, interpretations in opinion letters, policy statements, agency manuals, and enforcement guidelines do not warrant” the deference that courts normally pay to agency regulations that are adopted under statutes pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act through a process of publication, public comment and, sometimes, public hearings before final official publication.

“An agency’s interpretation of its own regulation, even one contained in an opinion letter or a guidance document, is given controlling weight if (1) the regulation is ambiguous and (2) the interpretation is not plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation,” wrote Judge Doumar. Using this standard, he concluded that the recent guidance letter did not stand up, because “even under the most liberal reading, ‘on the basis of sex’ in Section 106.33 means both ‘on the basis of gender’ and ‘on the basis of biological sex,’” so the school was authorized to segregate restrooms based on the biological sex of students. “To defer to the Department of Education’s newfound interpretation would be nothing less than to allow the Department of Education to ‘create de facto a new regulation’ through the use of a mere letter and guidance document,” he continued. “If the Department of Education wishes to amend its regulation, it is of course entitled to do so. However, it must go through notice and comment rulemaking, as required by the Administrative Procedure Act.”

Turning to the motion for preliminary injunction, the court found that G.G. failed to meet the most important test: to show that he was likely to prevail on the merits. Unlike the motion to dismiss the Title IX claim, as to which the court had to accept as true all of G.G.’s factual allegations, on the motion for preliminary injunction Judge Doumar said that G.G. had to submit evidence tending to prove his allegations, and as to this he had fallen short, merely repeating the allegations of the complaint and failing to flesh them out with the kind of factual details that would show he was likely to win on his equal protection claim. Among other things, Judge Doumar faulted G.G. for failing to present an affidavit from the psychologist who had diagnosed his gender dysphoria. The judge pointed out that the expert psychological evidence submitted with the motion was by another psychologist apparently hired for purposes of the litigation who had only met briefly with G.G. once, and whose testimony was generalized and not specific to G.G. Thus, there was no evidence beyond G.G.’s own assertions that being banned from using the boys’ restrooms was psychologically harmful to G.G. G.G. also failed to provide factual evidence to demonstrate his contention that the unisex restrooms were so inconveniently located as to present a hardship. He claimed that because of the proximity problem he had to hold his urine and suffered urinary infections, but offered no medical testimony to support this claim.

Most importantly, however, Judge Doumar accepted the School Board’s argument that allowing G.G. to use the boys’ restrooms would intrude on the constitutional privacy rights of male students. He observed that courts have generally found that individuals have a constitutional right of privacy with regard to exposure of their bodies to the opposite sex. The underlying, albeit unspoken, aspect of this analysis was that the complaining boys regard G.G. as a girl and object to a girl being present and observing them in the boys’ room. The court cited a recent decision by a federal court in Pittsburgh, rejecting a transgender man’s restroom suit against the University of Pittsburgh, and observed that the privacy concerns are even greater in the context of high school students. To the court, when the clash is between the constitutional right of privacy of the male students and the alleged psychological harm to G.G. of having to use a unisex restroom, the balance clearly favored the other male students, at least for purposes of preliminary relief pending trial. Doumar emphasized that G.G. was raising a “novel” claim, that it was unclear that he could prevail on the merits, and that he had presented no factual evidence on the issue of any irreparable injury that he might suffer if denied the use of the boys’ restrooms while this case proceeds on his equal protection claim.

G.G. is represented by attorneys from the ACLU of Virginia and the ACLU’s national LGBT Rights Project, who might seek to appeal these rulings to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. Although the 4th Circuit was traditionally a very conservative bench, President Obama’s appointments have turned it around, resulting in the circuit’s Virginia marriage equality decision in 2014, followed by a refusal to stay that opinion pending appeal. Thus, it is hard to predict how the 4th Circuit might react in light of the Justice Department’s intervention on behalf of G.G. in this case, but an appeal might not be hopeless.