Virginia has become ground zero for the transgender rights movement with the case of Gavin Grimm, the Gloucester County High School student whose case is before the U.S. Supreme Court.
A couple of years ago, when Grimm needed support, his parents drove him to Richmond for meetings at ROSMY, a support group for LGBT youths that has since changed its name to Side by Side.
On Sunday, Side by Side, in conjunction with the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, Equality Virginia and the Nationz Foundation, will lead a Richmond town hall forum on Title IX and supporting transgender youths.
Ted Lewis, executive director of Side by Side, said the organization has received numerous questions from youths and parents concerned about the Trump administration’s decision to rescind transgender student protection guidelines put in place during the Obama administration.
“We wanted to provide an opportunity for those youth and families to ask questions,” and to learn what the law says and to what extent transgender youths are protected, Lewis said.
Lewis hopes the forum will provide an opportunity for those in attendance “to be more visibly supportive of transgender youth in our community, knowing that transgender youth need our support now more than ever.”
These are dynamic times for the transgender community, in ways positive and negative. Side by Side, whose history dates back 25 years, has seen a 100 percent increase in the number of young people who have sought support over the past three years, Lewis said. In a change as of last July, a majority of its youths — 52 percent — are transgender.
Lewis attributes the rise to youths “having the ability and the language to describe who they are.” Previously, “they had to struggle in silence, but now they have the language.”
One of those young people was Grimm, who would come to Richmond “because there’s nothing between Gloucester and here” in the way of support for transgender youths, Lewis said.
Braden Butka, a senior at Manchester High School in Chesterfield County, has met Grimm. Butka, 18, will be among the speakers at Sunday’s town hall.
As a transgender student, Butka was initially uncomfortable using the boys’ or girls’ restroom. The school made an accommodation for him to use a unisex bathroom — not unlike the gender-neutral bathroom that alienated Grimm in Gloucester.
“It was frustrating to have to go out of my way during the school day to use the bathroom when there was one right across from the classroom,” Butka said.
Ultimately, he was allowed to use the boys’ bathroom at Manchester, a school he describes as “very open and accepting to everybody.”
As for the case of Grimm, “I think it’s really awesome. The voice of a teenager, a kid, can be really powerful,” Butka said. “I applaud him for it. It takes a lot of courage to do the things he’s doing right now.”
In April, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Title IX protects the right of transgender students to use sex-segregated facilities consistent with their gender identity. The Supreme Court issued an emergency stay to stop Grimm from using the boys’ restroom at his school before deciding in October to review the decision of the 4th Circuit, which is based in Richmond.
Gail Deady, The Secular Society Women’s Rights Legal Fellow of the ACLU of Virginia, said the withdrawal of the Obama administration’s guidelines sends “a terrible message” but “doesn’t change the law and it doesn’t undo protections for transgender students” under Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded education.
It does mean the Justice Department will not proactively protect transgender students and is less likely to investigate schools that discriminate against them, she said. “That means that groups like the ACLU and other attorneys will have to step in to enforce existing law.”
At Sunday’s town hall, she’ll explain to the youths what their legal rights are and what resources they have in advocating for themselves at school.
Oral arguments in the Grimm case are scheduled for March 28. This week, the Human Rights Campaign announced that 53 corporations — including Amazon, Apple, IBM and Microsoft — filed a brief in support of Grimm and his mother, Deirdre, in their legal battle with the Gloucester School Board.
The corporations “are concerned about the stigmatizing and degrading effects” of the School Board’s policy restricting access to public school restrooms for transgender youth, and argue that such policies could hurt businesses, employees and customers and undermine their ability “to build and maintain the diverse and inclusive workplaces that are essential to the success of their companies.”
As civil rights for gays and lesbians have taken flight, transgender people still face considerable headwinds. As Lewis points out, states and municipalities are more likely to provide protections for sexual orientation than for gender identity. Transgender youths are significantly more likely to attempt suicide than their lesbian, gay and bisexual peers, whose suicide attempt rates far exceed that of heterosexual youths, Lewis said. Meanwhile, transgender women of color — particularly black transgender women — are targets of violence.
Side by Side has three full-time and two part-time staff members serving locations in Richmond, Charlottesville and Petersburg, as well as an in-house clinician on contract who sees students and parents eight hours a week free of charge.
With much higher levels of “acute crisis” among youths either hospitalized or with suicide ideations, Side by Side is looking to bring in more staff as early as next week, Lewis said.
