The LGBTQ+ community is celebrating across the country as the Boyertown Area School District case ended with the defeat of those who sought to undermine the rights of transgender people throughout American schools.
A misguided argument for discrimination against the transgender community
The case, which challenged transgender students’ right to use the bathrooms or other facilities that correspond with their gender identity rather than their biological sex, was particularly threatening for the vulnerable community, as it could have set the precedent for further rights violations in the future. Fortunately, however, the Pennsylvania high school students who filed the lawsuit were forced to drop their case after a significant string of legal defeats, which put an end to a struggle that had gone on for three years.
That victory is a good thing. But there are still many lawsuits that want to deprive the LGBTQ+ community of many basic rights, and those battles are still taking place as we speak. The Title VII employment discrimination case, for example, lies before the Supreme Court right now, and it seeks to do pretty much the same as the Boyertown lawsuit wanted to, but in a larger scale. Same goes for the challenge against Trump’s transgender military ban, a legal resistance whose outcome will determine the future of the US military.
We can all hope that the same thing that happened in Boyertown happens in all these other cases—basically because the alternative is patently absurd. Those trying to undermine transgender rights are doing so on the ridiculous claim that cisgender individuals are somehow harmed by sharing space with transgender people, and that the former have a “right to privacy” that excludes the presence of the latter. In the minds of anti-trans ideology, it seems, being in the same room as a transgender person deprives someone else of their freedom. That’s the basic face of shameless discrimination right there.
The fate of Boyertown
As for Boyertown, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania saw right through the absurdity of the lawsuit, holding that “high school students have no constitutional right not to share restrooms and locker rooms with transgender students whose sex assigned at birth is different from theirs.” And the Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision, claiming that “transgender students face extraordinary social, psychological, and medical risks and the School District clearly had a compelling state interest in shielding them from discrimination.” They are certainly right.
While the anti-LGBTQ+ legal group that recruited the cisgender students who filed the lawsuit, Alliance Defending Freedom, did everything in its power to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court, the latter refused to hear it. After that, the plaintiffs had no choice but to dismiss their case.
Though this victory is important, the field is still dangerous for the LGBTQ+ community, who needs to fight for their rights in the face of a hostile political atmosphere and an administration that’s doing everything it can to silence the voices of minorities all across the country. Hopefully, justice will ultimately prevail.
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