South Carolina is asking the Supreme Court to let it enforce a ban on transgender students using restrooms aligned with their gender identity at school.
In an emergency appeal Thursday, the state asked the justices to lift a federal appeals court’s ruling blocking it from putting into effect a budget proviso that requires the state Department of Education to withhold some funding from districts that violate the policy.
South Carolina Solicitor General Thomas Hydrick acknowledged that the case implicates a question “fraught with emotions and differing perspectives.”
“That is all the more reason to defer to state lawmakers pending appeal,” he argued in the filing. “The decision was the South Carolina legislature’s to make. The end of this litigation will confirm that it made a valid one.”
The restriction was included in a spending bill for fiscal 2024 to 2025, which expired in June. State lawmakers included it again in the fiscal 2025 to 2026 spending bill, which went into effect July 1.
A transgender teenager, identified in court papers as John Doe, and his parents challenged the ban after he was suspended for using the boys’ bathroom at school. Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled in favor of the student, allowing him to use the school’s boys’ bathrooms as the lawsuit proceeds.
Hydrick said that the bathroom policy is “designed to protect the privacy and safety of all students in a space that has historically been recognized as intimate and vulnerable.”
The request comes as the Supreme Court has dealt several blows to LGBTQ issues in recent months.
In June, the justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines to uphold Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors. The court also allowed the Trump administration to begin enforcing a ban on transgender troops serving openly in the military in May.
Next term, the justices are set to weigh a pair of cases regarding state laws banning transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s school sports teams.
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