U.S. District Judge Mark Hornak on Monday granted a preliminary injunction in a case filed by three trans teens from Pine-Richland High School in Western Pennsylvania.
Juliet Evancho — the sister of singer Jackie Evancho, who performed at Trump’s inauguration — Elissa Ridenour, both 18, and a 17-year-old trans male student filed suit last year after their district approved a policy dictating that students had to use facilities in accordance their biological sex.
In his opinion, Hornak wrote that the plaintiffs have a “reasonable likelikhood of success” on their claim for equal protection, though not on their Title IX claim, and granted their request to use the restrooms consistent with their gender identity as the case wends its way through the court system.
The judge also denied the district’s petition to dismiss the suit.
“This is a huge win for Juliet, Elissa and A.S., who will be able once again to use the bathroom that matches who they are,” said Lambda Legal Staff Attorney Omar Gonzalez-Pagan. “Notwithstanding the Trump administration’s misguided and cruel actions last week, the court found that the school’s policy barring transgender students from the restroom that matches who they are violates the equal-protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.”
Of the district’s bathroom policy, Hornak said it “turns exclusively on the then-existing presence of a determinate external sex organ, no matter what other biological sex or gender markers may exist, irrespective of gender identity (even if as in the case of the plaintiffs, that gender identity is uncontested, and apparently persistent, consistent and medically and psychologically comprehensive), unrelated to how a student leads his or her life in all other respects, and irrespective of the manner in which the district treats that student for all other purposes.”
Hornak went on to say he had yet to see evidence that the board acted on evidence that the plaintiffs’ bathroom use before the policy was adopted “in any way actually interfered with the orderly operations of the high school, or imminently threatened to do so.” He noted that there had been one complaint from a student and one from a parent over Evancho’s restroom use, but other than that had seen no evidence of the students’ restroom use causing “any sort of alarm” to any other students. He also wrote that the board did not appear to consider the risk of harm to the plaintiffs from the policy.
Hornak referenced Trump administration’s recent action, stating that, while the Obama guidance was revoked, no other interpretation of Title IX for the purpose of gender-identity discrimination was offered. The revocation “appears to have generated an interpretative vacuum pending further consideration by those federal agencies of the legal issues involved in such matters.” The judge said this “set of circumstances substantially complicates the issues here.”
“Every student must be respected for who they are and be afforded equal educational opportunity,” Gonzalez-Pagan noted. “The court recognized that policies that seek to erase a transgender student’s identity do not address any real problems, but rather only serve to discriminate and harm our youth. Such policies are not only wrong, they are illegal. The rescission of guidance by the Trump administration cannot change that.”