Federal judges today issued an eloquent memo praising Gavin Grimm, the transgender teen boy who has been fighting for equal access to the boys’ restroom in his school, comparing him to past civil rights icons, even as they said they would not expedite his case.
Grimm’s case had been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which sent it back to the 4th Circuit last month in light of the Trump administration’s shift in guidelines regarding trans students. That court had previously backed Grimm. Today, a three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit, Senior Judge Andre M. Davis, Judge Paul V. Niemeyer, and Judge Henry F. Floyd, said it would not hear his case against his Virginia school before he graduates this spring.
It also vacated a preliminary injunction that said Grimm’s school must let him use the boys’ restroom. This was a procedural formality, since the injunction had been put on hold by the Supreme Court in any case.
G.G. takes his place among other modern-day human rights leaders who strive to ensure that, one day, equality will prevail, and that the core dignity of every one of our brothers and sisters is respected by lawmakers and others who wield power over their lives.
Davis, however, took the occasion to pen an additional, powerful, five-page memo, to which Floyd added his name, praising Grimm and setting his case into the context of other major civil rights efforts. He wrote of previous civil rights heros:
Our country has a long and ignominious history of discriminating against our most vulnerable and powerless. We have an equally long history, however, of brave individuals—Dred Scott, Fred Korematsu, Linda Brown, Mildred and Richard Loving, Edie Windsor, and Jim Obergefell, to name just a few—who refused to accept quietly the injustices that were perpetuated against them. It is unsurprising, of course, that the burden of confronting and remedying injustice falls on the shoulders of the oppressed. These individuals looked to the federal courts to vindicate their claims to human dignity, but as the names listed above make clear, the judiciary’s response has been decidedly mixed. Today, G.G. adds his name to the list of plaintiffs whose struggle for justice has been delayed and rebuffed; as Dr. King reminded us, however, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” G.G.’s journey is delayed but not finished.
G.G.’s case is about much more than bathrooms.
He then explained the overarching importance of Grimm’s case:
G.G.’s case is about much more than bathrooms. It’s about a boy asking his school to treat him just like any other boy. It’s about protecting the rights of transgender people in public spaces and not forcing them to exist on the margins. It’s about governmental validation of the existence and experiences of transgender people, as well as the simple recognition of their humanity. His case is part of a larger movement that is redefining and broadening the scope of civil and human rights so that they extend to a vulnerable group that has traditionally been unrecognized, unrepresented, and unprotected.
And concluded:
G.G. takes his place among other modern-day human rights leaders who strive to ensure that, one day, equality will prevail, and that the core dignity of every one of our brothers and sisters is respected by lawmakers and others who wield power over their lives.
G.G. is and will be famous, and justifiably so. But he is not “famous” in the hollowed-out Hollywood sense of the term. He is famous for the reasons celebrated by the renowned Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shehab Nye, in her extraordinary poem, Famous. Despite his youth and the formidable power of those arrayed against him at every stage of these proceedings, “[he] never forgot what [he] could do.”
The whole memo is worth a read. It’s not that long, and will give you faith that even as we face a daunting anti-LGBTQ backlash, there are still people in our government with a true sense of liberty and justice for all—and young people like Gavin Grimm, who just might change the world.