The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected South Carolina’s request to enforce a ban on transgender students using restrooms that match their gender identity at school.
The emergency order keeps intact a lower court’s ruling letting a transgender teenager, identified in court papers as John Doe, use his school’s boys’ bathroom as his challenge to the state’s policy proceeds.
It emphasized that the denial of South Carolina’s emergency application is “not a ruling on the merits of the legal issues presented in the litigation.”
“Rather, it is based on the standards applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this Court,” the unsigned order read.
Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch would have granted the application, the order says.
South Carolina’s bathroom-use restrictions were added to its annual spending bill, requiring the state Department of Education to withhold some funding from districts that run afoul of the policy.
It was put in the spending bill for fiscal 2024 to 2025, which expired in June, and was included again in the bill for fiscal 2025 to 2026, which went into effect July 1.
South Carolina state Sen. Wes Climer (R), who introduced the budget proviso, has defended the measure as “appropriate policy” meant to protect children and “basic common sense.” In July, Climer said he would run for Rep. Ralph Norman’s (R-S.C.) seat in Congress, after Norman launched a bid for governor.
Doe’s lawyers contend that the budget proviso violates Title IX, the federal civil rights law barring sex-based discrimination. He mounted his legal challenge after being suspended for using the boys’ bathroom at school. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit enjoined the proviso last month as the lawsuit progresses.
“This application for emergency relief concerns one ninth-grader’s restroom use,” Doe’s lawyers argued in their response to the state’s emergency application.
“Today’s decision from the Supreme Court reaffirms what we all know to be true: Contrary to South Carolina’s insistence, trans students are not emergencies,” said Alexandra Brodsky, litigation director for Public Justice’s Students’ Civil Rights Project, which is representing Doe. “They are not threats. They are young people looking to learn and grow at school, despite the state-mandated hostility they too often face. We are so thrilled that our client will continue to be able to use boys’ restrooms while his appeal continues, and hope today’s decision will provide hope to other trans students and their families during these difficult times.”
In its emergency application to the justices, South Carolina had argued that the bathroom policy is “designed to protect the privacy and safety of all students in a space that has historically been recognized as intimate and vulnerable.”
South Carolina Solicitor General Thomas Hydrick called the case one “fraught with emotions and differing perspectives” but said that’s “all the more reason” to defer to state lawmakers as the appeal moves forward.
“While we are disappointed in the Court’s decision today, we respect the process and will comply with the ruling,” South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, a GOP candidate for governor, said in a statement. “This ruling only creates an exception for one student. The state’s bathroom law remains in full effect for everyone else. We may have lost this battle, but we believe we will ultimately win the war. We will continue this fight at the Fourth Circuit and, if necessary, take it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. We are confident the law is on our side and will be upheld in the end.”
The Supreme Court turned away a similar appeal from a Virginia school board in 2021, leaving intact another 4th Circuit ruling allowing a transgender student to use the bathroom matching his gender identity. Justices Thomas and Alito, the court’s most conservative members, said at the time they would have heard the school district’s appeal.
Laws barring transgender people from using bathrooms and other facilities consistent with their gender identity in K-12 schools, colleges and universities and government-owned buildings have been adopted by nearly half the nation since 2017.
Since January, President Trump’s administration has sought to enforce restrictions on restroom and locker room usage in schools nationwide, threatening funding for states and school districts that allow transgender students to access facilities that do not match their sex at birth.
—Updated at 4:47 p.m. EDT