The Struggle for Trans Rights Within U.S. Courts

Just this month, the U.S. courts delivered two decisions regarding trans rights. One court affirms trans student’s rights to use the restroom matching their gender identity; the other strikes down Idaho’s ban on gender changes for birth certificates.

In Florida, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a previous ruling that a Jacksonville high school was wrong to deny trans student Drew Adams access to the men’s restroom. The three-year-long legal battle between Adams and St. John’s County School Board ended earlier this month with the federal appeals court upholding the student’s rights to use the restroom that matches their gender identity.

“I am very happy to see justice prevail after spending almost my entire high school career fighting for equal treatment,” says Adams, now a 19-year-old student at the University of Central Florida, in a statement.

The ruling cited the Supreme Courts’ recent decision in Bostock v Clayton County, which found that sex discrimination is banned under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This now includes discrimination based on sexual orientation as well as gender identity. The appeals court arrived at the same reading of Title IX of the Education Act of 1972, which bans sex discrimination in education.

In Idaho, the U.S. District Court quashed the state’s attempt to revive a policy barring individuals from changing their gender marker on their birth certificates. The same court had ordered the state in 2018 to end this practice of automatically rejecting applications for such changes. However, this year, Idaho defied the order by passing a bill banning changes to gender markers in most cases, with state Gov. Brad Little signing it into law.

This comes as no surprise from the state which earlier this year banned trans athletes from competing in school sports. Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act was signed into law by Republican Gov. Little and prohibits transgender athletes from competing in sports consistent with their gender identity.

More specifically, it requires all potential athletes to have their biological gender verified by a physician during a “routine sports physical” in which the physician can rely on one or more of the following methods: “the student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels.” Idaho is the first and only state to enact such a ban.

While the struggle for trans rights has been getting some media attention lately, the battle is far from over. Trans students now have access to the restrooms that they feel most comfortable in, and discrimination based on gender identity is banned in the workplace. However, Governors such as Brad Little and members of the Trump Administration continue to pass legislation targeting the trans community.