A federal judge has ordered an Indiana school district to allow a biologically female student who identifies as male to use the boys’ restroom at school.
Judge Tanya Walton Pratt, an Obama appointee, rejected a request by the Martinsville School District in Martinsville, Indiana, to postpone the enforcement of an April ruling that will require the school district to allow a transgender student access to male-designated lavatory facilities.
The Monday ruling means that the school district must immediately allow the student to use the boys’ bathroom, even as the school district says it plans to appeal the original April ruling to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
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The lawsuit against the school district was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, which told the news outlet WISHTV that the school district already allowed other transgender students to use the bathroom corresponding to their gender identity, a fact Pratt noted in her order.
“[The district’s] speculative harm is both unsupported by any evidence and appears questionable, given that the School District allows other transgender students to use the restrooms associated with their gender identity,” Pratt wrote.
The litigation comes as the Department of Education reportedly works on revising Trump-era regulations on the enforcement of Title IX to include gender identity as a protected category under the 1972 law barring discrimination based on sex in educational settings. The law’s application to transgender students has been a matter of legal debate for several years.
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In 2020, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Virginia school district had violated a transgender student’s civil rights under Title IX when it barred the biologically female student from using the boys’ bathroom. Meanwhile, lawyers in the Trump administration issued several memos rejecting the idea that gender identity was protected under Title IX.
