Gavin Grimm, the transgender man who made national headlines for suing the Gloucester County School Board over the board's transgender bathroom policy, announced that he's now an American Civil Liberties Union director.
It was a years-long battle for Grimm who sued the school board in 2015 while he was still enrolled at Gloucester High School.
In 2014, after Grimm notified the school of his male gender identity, the board enacted a policy that required transgender students to use private bathrooms that correspond with their biological gender. He was using the boys' bathroom for a while up until the school said it received complaints and the school board decided to craft a new policy.
In 2017, the landmark case was dropped by the U.S. Supreme Court after the Trump administration repealed the Department of Education's previous Title IX guidance on transgender students' rights. It would have been the first transgender case to ever be heard by the high court, but was sent back to lower courts for reconsideration.
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia sided with Grimm in 2018 when District Judge Arenda Wright Allen ruled that that board's bathroom policy violated Grimm's constitutional rights and other federal protections. In August 2019, Grimm won summary judgment on all his legal claims.
Grimm graduated from Gloucester High School in 2017. The ACLU represented him throughout the entire legal process. He was deemed a civil rights champion after his case prompted a national conversation about transgender students' and transgender citizens' rights.
Just after the start of the new year, Grimm announced that he was elected to the ACLU's board of directors for a one-year term.
The Gloucester County School Board has filed a federal appeal to defend its transgender bathroom policy.
Before a judge ruled in Grimm's favor, the board did host a discussion about their current policy, proposing a change that would allow transgender students to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identities.