A Minnesota School District Caves to Transgender Bathroom Policies

A Minnesota school district agreed to a $218,500 settlement with a former student who claimed that she was discriminated against when her school did not allow her to access the boys’ locker room and restroom. In 2015, Helene Woods’s daughter, who had begun using masculine pronouns and adopted the name Matt, informed officials at the Buffalo-Hanover-Montrose School District that she wanted to use the boys’ restroom and locker rooms. The school refused, instead arranging for “Matt” Woods to use a single-occupancy bathroom and changing room. This, however, did not solve the situation. In 2019, Helene Woods filed a lawsuit against the District on behalf of her daughter. This week the District agreed to a settlement in the case.

In a statement, the District said that it has not admitted to any wrongdoing. Nor should it! The school district took steps to accommodate Woods when she brought up her discomfort, and did so in a manner that did not compromise the privacy of other students. However, as part of the settlement, Buffalo-Hanover-Montrose School District agreed to policy changes that allow students access to bathrooms and locker rooms and compete on sports teams that match their self-professed “gender identity” rather than their biological sex.

These policies prioritize the preferences of a few students over the privacy of their classmates, as well as threatening to rob female athletes of opportunities by forcing them to compete against biological males. Students deserve to be treated with dignity and have their basic privacy rights respected, and they should not be silenced or stigmatized for raising concerns about school policies that infringe those rights or that remove fairness from athletic competitions. Furthermore, when schools adopt policies that embrace the transgender agenda, they affirm dangerous lies that cause lasting damage to young people. Even though the District defended their decision to protect student privacy, they accepted a settlement that puts the demands of the transgender lobby ahead of the well-being of their students. (. . . CONTINUE READING)

In a Big Win for Nonprofit Donors, Supreme Court Upholds Privacy Rules

Via The Daily Signal

What would it take for the American Civil Liberties Union and the Independent Women’s Law Center, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Gun Owners of America, and the Human Rights Campaign and the Proposition 8 Legal Defense Fund to be found in the same trench fighting the same opponent? Nothing less than the right to the freedom of association, which the Supreme Court has held is implicit in the First Amendment.

In Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta, the Supreme Court on Thursday held by a 6-3 majority that California violated that right by demanding that charitable organizations disclose their major donors as a condition of fundraising in the state. (...)

The majority took note of the hundreds of organizations, “span[ning] the ideological spectrum,” that had filed briefs supporting the plaintiff groups in this case. They emphasized the “gravity of the privacy concerns” that any advocacy group would face from disclosure of donors.

“The deterrent effect feared by these organizations,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “is real and pervasive.” The district court had cited evidence of “pervasive” Schedule B disclosures by the state as well as “ample evidence” that these particular organizations, their employees, and supporters could face hostility, intimidation, or harassment upon such disclosure. California’s “assurances of confidentiality,” the Supreme Court said, “are not worth much.”

Roberts concluded the court’s opinion with this important admonition: “When it comes to the freedom of association, the protections of the First Amendment are triggered not only by actual restrictions on an individual’s ability to join with others to further shared goals. The risk of a chilling effect on association is enough.”

That’s a freedom we all can share.

Student Privacy Falters at the Supreme Court, But There's Hope for the Future

Via First Things

On June 28, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case of Gloucester County School Board v. Grimm. It takes four justices’ votes to grant review. In Grimm there were just two—those of Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. So the best-known and longest-running of the “transgender bathroom” cases has ended with a whimper. 

The case started in 2015 when Gavin Grimm, a rising sophomore at a highschool in Virginia's Gloucester County, objected to the school's requirement that every student use the bathroom corresponding to his or her sex. In Grimm’s case, that was the girls’ restroom, for she was enrolled in school as the biological female that she is.

The school tried to accommodate Grimm. It permitted Grimm to present as a boy and to use the bathroom in the nurse’s office. It even built several unisex restrooms. But the school did not give Grimm access to the boys’ bathroom, which Grimm demanded but which parents of other students opposed (note, by the way, that Grimm had not had any surgeries).

In 2016, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Grimm. The decision owed much to an opinion letter of the Obama Administration’s Department of Education. The letter said that “[w]hen a school elects to separate or treat students differently on the basis of sex . . . a school generally must treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity.” Gloucester schools sought Supreme Court review, and got it. But the Court later backtracked. Because the Trump Administration had rescinded the Obama instruction on which the lower court had relied, in 2017 the justices sent the case back to the Fourth Circuit for another go, and in 2020, the Fourth Circuit again sided with Grimm.

Comment on Student Privacy Case from Renee Carlson, General Counsel

We asked our own Renee Carlson, General Counsel of our True North Legal initiative, for her views on the Gloucester County decision:

While we are disappointed that the entire Court did not choose to take the case - Justice Thomas and Justice Alito would have  -  it is possible the status of a similar appellate court case pending review influenced the Court’s decision not to take the Gloucester County case. We know from the Court’s Bostock decision, the Court is not naive to the societal conflicts resulting from varying interpretations of Title IX. We're hopeful the Court will take up the issue in the future and put an end to these inaccurate interpretations of the law.

For more information on True North Legal, email us here.