US: Pennsylvania school district settles with transgender teens who alleged discrimination over bathroom policy

A Pennsylvania school district has settled a lawsuit with three transgender teens, moving to allow all transgender students to use bathrooms in accordance with the gender they identify with and scrapping a rule that required students to use bathrooms that corresponded to their “biological sex.”

Transgender teen Juliet Evancho, whose sister Jackie sang at President Trump’s inauguration and later pleaded to meet the president on behalf of transgender students, sued the Pine-Richland School District after the board passed a resolution barring her from the girls’ bathroom last fall. She was joined by two transgender classmates: Elissa Ridenour and a boy identified as A.S. 

The lawsuit was one of several across the nation filed by transgender students challenging school policies that kept them from the bathrooms where they felt most comfortable. Parents and school officials supporting those policies say they are necessary to safeguard privacy and traditional values. But transgender students say the policies are discriminatory and make them feel ostracized.

The U.S. Supreme Court was set this year to hear the case of Gavin Grimm, a transgender teen from Gloucester, Va., who sued his school board after it barred him from the boys’ bathroom. But after the Trump administration withdrew guidance that directed schools to allow transgender student to use bathrooms that match their gender identity, the high court sent the case to a lower court. Read more via Washington Post