President Trump’s administration notified the Supreme Court on Wednesday that it would withdraw guidance regarding transgender students at issue in a hot-button Supreme Court case.
The letter from Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler said the Justice and Education Departments removed an Obama administration directive regarding how schools should deal with transgender students’ bathroom usage.
The Obama administration’s guidance called on public schools nationwide to allow transgender students to choose the bathroom facility according to their self-professed gender identity and threatened to block federal funding from schools that didn’t comply.
Under Trump’s guidance, states will now be able to individually interpret whether the protections under the Education Amendments Act’s Title IX apply to transgender students.
“This letter is to inform the Court that, on February 22, 2017, the Department of Education, in conjunction with the Department of Justice’s Office of Civil Rights, announced their decision to withdraw that guidance and a subsequent joint guidance letter, not to rely on the views expressed in the guidance, and instead to consider further and more completely the legal issues involved,” Kneedler wrote.
A memo from the Justice and Education Departments adds, “Please note that this withdrawal of these guidance documents does not leave students without protections from discrimination, bullying, or harassment.”
The new guidance will affect Gloucester County School Board v. G.G., a case before the Supreme Court about the legality of federal policy on bathroom access for transgender people. The high court agreed to hear the case before the November 2016 elections. In December, the Supreme Court extended the case’s briefing schedule, which effectively pushed oral arguments back to later in the spring.
The extension provided by the high court allowed the incoming Trump administration to alter the government’s position on the guidance at issue before it proceeded through oral arguments.
