South Carolina is asking the Supreme Court to be able to fully enforce its policy requiring school districts to mandate that students only use restrooms that correspond with their biological sex.
The state filed an emergency application late Thursday asking the High Court to block an order from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit requiring a Berkley County school to allow a female who identifies as a male to use the boys’ restrooms.
“South Carolina passed this law to protect the privacy and safety of every child in our schools,” South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said in a statement. “But activist judges on the Fourth Circuit threw out common sense and the will of the people to give one student a special exception. What about the rights and safety of all students? Where does it stop? This is judicial activism at its worst, and we’re fighting back. South Carolina will not stand by while ideology is put ahead of children’s safety. I am taking this fight all the way to the Supreme Court.”
State lawmakers passed a measure in the spending bill for the fiscal year of 2024 to 2025 conditioning 25 percent of state funds appropriated to school districts on their compliance with a requirement that schools require having single-sex bathrooms based on the biological reality of male and female. Lawmakers included the measure in their latest spending bill for the next fiscal year, and it went into effect on July 1, CBS News reported.
A transgender-identifying student — who is identified in court papers as John Doe and is a female who claims to be male — and her guardians filed a lawsuit in November 2024, alleging that the provision violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and Title IX. After the Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee law that banned sex change drugs and surgeries for minors in June of this year, a district court in South Carolina paused a challenge to the bathroom policy. But the Fourth Circuit earlier this month ultimately granted an injunction that only applies to Doe.
South Carolina argues in its appeal that the Fourth Circuit incorrectly relied on a 2020 decision from a case out of Virginia, which found a school board rule requiring transgender students to use restrooms that correspond with biological reality unlawful. South Carolina argues that the Supreme Court’s recent Tennessee ruling should control the outcome of the case. That ruling rejected a constitutional challenge to Tennessee’s law and deferred to the state’s interest in protecting minors from experimental treatments. Justices also expressed in concurring opinions that they do not view transgender-identifying individuals as a suspect or quasi-suspect class.
READ MORE: Supreme Court Upholds Tennessee Law Banning Sex Changes for Minors
“This Proviso resoundingly reflects the will of the South Carolina General Assembly, and therefore the will of the people of South Carolina, due to near unanimous approval in both chambers of the legislature,” the state’s emergency appeal reads. “Ultimately, this policy choice is one in which the Court must defer to the appropriate legislative body.”
Wilson said he will continue fighting for the bathroom policy in the Fourth Circuit, pending the Supreme Court’s decision.
“This case is about more than one school district,” Wilson said. “It is about whether unelected judges will override the will of parents and legislators, or whether South Carolina and other states will retain the authority to safeguard student privacy in the most sensitive spaces.”
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
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