Where have all the transactivists gone lately? I mean, since June 15, 2020, when the U.S. Supreme Court, for its own reasons, unexpectedly handed them complete victory over women's spaces in the case of EEOC v Harris Funeral Homes, forever now to be incorporated into the case of Bostock v. Clayton County?
I would expect them to be filling social media with congratulations, giving interviews, partying, and generally raising the roof with joy. They've been handed an all-out victory, and their opponents have been handed a total rout. That's all of their opponents, with all their complex motivations: the evangelicals, the Executive Branch, the social conservative libertarians, the radical feminists, the gender-critical women, and the silent majority.
Instead, they're quiet.
I think it's because the implications are so momentous they've had to take a pause. They, like their critics, are stunned. It's like watching one of those setups of hundreds of dominoes as the finger-flip sets them falling, one by one, in perfect, awesome, inexorable order. Trump's anti-trans military, health, and other guidelines -- out the door. Idaho's women's sports law: dead. Women's sports in general: colonized, and resistance futile. Male access to undressed girls and women in locker rooms, rape shelters, and prisons: affirmed. The Equality Act: coming next year. Radical and gender-critical feminists: mowed down.
What's to complain about, or act on, anymore? The rest is just mopping up the gore. And the courts will do that work. The trans lobby can rest on its laurels: the job is done.
Just today the longest-running trans we-just-want-to-pee-case, Grimm v Gloucester School Board, has fallen to Bostock. The female high-schooler who wanted to be treated like a boy and use the boys' bathroom has been fully and aggressively vindicated. The bathroom case was a bellwether for broader radical feminist arguments that transwomen should use the bathrooms assigned to their sex, and that women in general should have legally-protected private spaces. Those issues are settled, in the US, anyway, officially today, but they were really settled on June 15.
Bostock has settled everything, on specious and illogical grounds beyond my scope here (though I will say more in a post coming up).
The Grimm case had bounced back up to the federal appeals court. Its decision today isn't going anywhere. Appeals to the Supreme Court: useless now.
To us women: I wish I had some uplifting words.
Here's the New York Times article on the Grimm case, dated August 26, 2020.
"
A federal appeals court dealt a major victory Wednesday for proponents of transgender rights, ruling that it is unconstitutional and a violation of Title IX for schools to bar students from using the bathroom that matches their gender identity.
The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Gavin Grimm, the transgender man who sued his Virginia high school for barring him from using the boys restroom. The long-running legal fight has become a flashpoint in the battle over LGBTQ rights in education.
The appeals court previously backed Grimm in 2016. The Supreme Court was set to hear the case in 2017 but sent it back to the lower courts after the Trump administration, during President Donald Trump's first months in office, revoked Obama-era guidance on the rights of transgender students.
The 4th Circuit again ruled in favor of Grimm in a 2-1 decision, upholding a district court’s decision from last year. The two Obama appointees on the appeals panel sided with Grimm, with a dissenting opinion from an appointee of George H.W. Bush.
“At the heart of this appeal is whether equal protection and Title IX can protect transgender students from school bathroom policies that prohibit them from affirming their gender,” U.S. Circuit Judge Henry Floyd wrote in the majority opinion. “We join a growing consensus of courts in holding that the answer is resoundingly yes.”
The 4th Circuit’s ruling comes after another appeals court, the 11th Circuit, ruled earlier this month in favor of a transgender teen who sued to force his Florida high school to allow him to use the boys restroom. A federal judge in Idaho last week also blocked a state law that barred transgender women from participating in women’s sports.
All three rulings cite the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in June that affirmed LGBTQ workplace rights. The court’s 6-3 decision in that case, Bostock v. Clayton County, said that the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s prohibition of workplace discrimination “on the basis of sex” also protects employees against discrimination based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.
In light of that ruling, Floyd wrote in the Wednesday ruling that “we have little difficulty holding that a bathroom policy precluding Grimm from using the boys restrooms discriminated against him ‘on the basis of sex.’”
Floyd's opinion offered blistering criticism of the Gloucester County, Va. school board that sought to prohibit Grimm from using the boys bathroom.
“We are left without doubt that the Board acted to protect cisgender boys from Gavin’s mere presence — a special kind of discrimination against a child that he will no doubt carry with him for life,” Ford wrote, adding that the school’s policy was based on hypothetical fears and prejudice.
“How shallow a promise of equal protection that would not protect Grimm from the fantastical fears and unfounded prejudices of his adult community,” he wrote.
In his dissent, U.S. Circuit Judge Paul Niemeyer said the school district had appropriately accommodated Gavin and that its bathroom policy was constitutional and consistent with Title IX.
“At bottom, Gloucester High School reasonably provided separate restrooms for its male and female students and accommodated transgender students by also providing unisex restrooms that any student could use,” Niemeyer wrote. “The law requires no more of it.”
The Education Department said in June that it was reviewing the Supreme Court’s decision on LGBTQ workplace rights. But the department’s Office for Civil Rights has not made any public statement about the implications of the Bostock ruling on the Trump administration’s position that Title IX does not protect students against discrimination related to sexual orientation or transgender status.
Access to school bathrooms for transgender students has long been a political issue. Some social conservatives are pushing for Trump to more visibly embrace anti-transgender policies in his reelection bid.
At the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night, Cissie Graham Lynch, the granddaughter of Billy Graham, accused Democrats of putting faith “under attack” with policies expanding the rights of transgender students. “Democrats pressured schools to allow boys to compete in girls' sports and use girls' locker rooms,” she said.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has vowed to reinstate Education Department guidance protecting the rights of transgender students.
Comments
Post a Comment