Horowitz: Just two SCOTUS justices believe that only a woman can be a woman



In a Supreme Court term largely devoid of hot-button cases, it's more telling what the high court declines to rule upon than what it does rule on.

It's not like we are asking a supposed 6-3 conservative majority on the court to overturn long-standing bad precedent enshrining the left's cultural rotgut into the 14th Amendment. We merely ask that the justices not add new phantom precedent under the banner of a conservative court. Yet only two justices evidently believe in the most basic facts of nature — up to and including a man being a man and a woman being a woman.

Even before Trump appointed three allegedly conservative justices to the court, I always thought the lower court ruling in Gloucester v. Grimm, one of the pioneering transgender cases, would be overturned. I guess I gave the "conservative" gatekeepers of judicial nominations too much credit.

In April 2016, Judge Henry Floyd, an Obama appointee on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote a 2-1 decision (Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board) forcing a local school board to comply with Obama's executive overreach, which demands that schools allow boys into girls' bathrooms (and vice versa).

At issue is a girl in Gloucester County, Virginia, who wanted to use the boys' bathroom in school. The liberals who are at war with the most inviolable science in our everyday lives believe that she is really a he. When the school board refused to change nature due to an unfortunate mental disorder, the student sued in district court in 2015, claiming discrimination based on an absurd reading of Title IX proposed by Obama's Department of Education.

Although Title IX of the United States Education Amendments of 1972 was designed to prohibit discrimination in schools against one gender, the Obama administration took it upon itself to "expand" the law to redefine gender itself. In January 2015, the DOE's Office of Civil Rights promulgated a regulation barring schools from assigning bathroom facilities based on biological sex, demanding they instead assign them based on someone's chosen gender. In addition to representing a facial absurdity, this Fourth Circuit opinion, which reversed a district court decision, was lawless and a complete twisting of a congressional statute.

Judge Floyd absurdly ruled that the 1972 law somehow covered a concept that they couldn't have imagined at the time. "The proudest moments of the federal judiciary have been when we affirm the burgeoning values of our bright youth, rather than preserve the prejudices of the past," wrote Judge Floyd of the Fourth Circuit.

The length of time it took to get this case before the Supreme Court was frustrating. But even a pessimist like myself never believed that the Supreme Court would uphold such an opinion. Now, three conservative justices later (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett), all but Thomas and Alito voted Monday to deny the appeal from the school board and allow the Fourth Circuit's ruling to stand.

This denial of an appeal speaks just as loudly as a ruling itself. We already know that Gorsuch, writing the majority opinion in Bostock, believes that the word "sex" in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act means transgenderism. So, I guess if he believes transgenderism can be retrofitted into a 1964 statute, it's not a jump to apply it to a 1972 statute as well. But it's also jarring that Kavanaugh and Barrett declined to add their names to the dissent from denial of certioari.

At the time of the Fourth Circuit ruling, Judge Paul Niemeyer, the lone dissenter, observed that the court literally redefined the definition of "sex" from the bench and "for the first time ever, holds that a public high school may not provide separate restrooms and locker rooms on the basis of biological sex." Niemeyer further observes that this decision "overrules custom, culture, and the very demands inherent in human nature for privacy and safety, which the separation of such facilities is designed to protect." And this was all done based on a Department of Education edict, overriding congressional statutes.

The majority opinion even recognized "the widely accepted practice" of separate bathrooms (no kidding!) and the inherent safety and privacy dangers posed by this social transformation. But in classic legal fog, Judge Floyd concluded, "It is not apparent to us, however, that the truth of these propositions undermines the conclusion we reach regarding the level of deference due to the Department's interpretation of its own regulations."

Once again, the two unelected branches of government — the lower courts and the Department of Education — ganged up against the legislature to promote social transformation without representation. And we couldn't even get a "conservative" Supreme Court to overturn the decision.

It's interesting how the courts seem to be concerned with the "right" of someone to use the opposite gender's bathroom, but there is no right to breathe freely from one's mouth and nose or prevent experimental injections in one's body. They are constantly discovering new rights while uprooting the self-evident ones we celebrate this week from our founding documents. It's all in the science.

Either way, one should not look to the Supreme Court to conserve anything other than bad lower court rulings. This is the same court that refused an appeal from Idaho after the Ninth Circuit forced its prison system to pay for a castration of a male sex offender in prison. As legal scholar Josh Hammer ominously warned following last week's disappointing opinion on religious liberty: "Unless fundamental changes are made that cut to the core of the modern conservative legal movement, conservatives will remain disappointed. The Court is not, and will not be, our savior."

Supreme Court refuses to hear case on transgender student using preferred bathroom



The Supreme Court handed another victory to LGBTQ advocates this week by refusing to hear a case questioning the rights of transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms of their choosing.

On Monday, the top court declined a Virginia school board's request to hear a case concerning whether one of its students, Gavin Grimm, was legally entitled to use a bathroom that aligned with the student's gender identity rather than biological sex.

In an order, the court said simply, "The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied," before noting that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would have taken up the case. No further explanation was given.

By declining, the Supreme Court let a lower court ruling stand that prohibited Grimm's school board from forcing Grimm to use bathrooms for female students or separate unisex bathrooms. The court's decision falls in line with previous rulings on the matter, according to Forbes, and may signal the establishment of an official stance.

What are the details?

In 2015, Grimm, who was born a girl, sued the Gloucester County School Board over its bathroom policy after coming out as a transgender boy.

The complaint argued that the school's policy forcing transgender students to use separate bathrooms left Grimm feeling "stigmatized and isolated" and violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution and Title IX, which bans discrimination on the basis of sex.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented Grimm in the case, lamented that the school board "continued to exclude Gavin even after he began receiving hormone therapy (which altered his bone and muscle structure, deepened his voice, and caused him to grow facial hair), obtained a Virginia state I.D. card listing his sex as male, underwent chest reconstruction surgery, obtained a court order legally changing his sex to male under Virginia law, and received a new Virginia birth certificate reflecting that his sex is male."

The Supreme Court initially agreed to hear the case in 2016 after the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Grimm. But after the Trump administration overturned an Obama-era rule that directed schools not to discriminate on the basis of gender identity, the court changed its mind and sent the case back to a lower court for reconsideration in light of the new policy.

Last year, the Fourth Circuit again sided with Grimm in the dispute. But when the school board petitioned for the Supreme Court to finally consider the case, the top court balked.

What else?

In response to the news, ACLU senior staff attorney Josh Block said, "This is the third time in recent years that the Supreme Court has allowed appeals court decisions in support of transgender students to stand. This is an incredible victory for Gavin and for transgender students around the country. Our work is not yet done, and the ACLU is continuing to fight against anti-trans laws targeting trans youth in states around the country."

Grimm, who is now 22, added, "I am glad that my years-long fight to have my school see me for who I am is over. Being forced to use the nurse's room, a private bathroom, and the girl's room was humiliating for me, and having to go to out-of-the-way bathrooms severely interfered with my education. Trans youth deserve to use the bathroom in peace without being humiliated and stigmatized by their own school boards and elected officials."

In its petition, the school board had noted that "the question of how best to respond to a teenager who identifies with the opposite biological sex is often excruciatingly difficult."

"On the one hand, the teenager deserves and needs everyone's compassion," it said. "On the other hand, allowing the teenager to use multi-user restrooms, locker rooms and shower facilities reserved for the opposite sex raises what this Court has acknowledged to be serious concerns about bodily privacy — for the teenager and others."

The school board argued the case would be for the court an "ideal, timely vehicle" to settle the question over Title IX gender identity application. But evidently, the court thought otherwise.