Transgender bathroom ruling in Virginia temporarily blocked by U.S. Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday to temporarily block a previous court order that allowed transgender students in Virginia to use bathrooms based on their gender identification.

The high court voted 5-3 in favor of Gloucester High School in southeastern Virginia after the school board challenged the decision of a trial judge from the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, who considered the school's bathroom policy illegal.

Gavin Grimm, a 17-year-old female student who identifies as a male, sued the school body last year after it adopted a policy that required students to use bathrooms based on their biological sex and assigned those with "gender identity issues" separate private bathrooms.

"The board continues to believe that its resolution of this complex matter fully considered the interests of all students and parents in the Gloucester County school system," the school board said in a statement.

According to The New York Times, Justice Stephen G. Breyer voted with the conservative justices "as a courtesy" and in order to maintain the status quo for the time being. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan ruled in favor of Grimm.

Another school district in Virginia also passed an ordinance in May that defied President Barack Obama's transgender bathroom mandate for public schools to allow students to use the bathroom according to their gender identification.

"I can't tell you how many calls we had, but we had more calls than we could count asking us to take action on this issue," Grayson County Public School Superintendent Kelly Wilmore told LifeSiteNews.

Wilmore also added that the ordinance was not a political thing but something that parents requested from the school.

"It wasn't the politics of just the Republican side...it was a lot of people on the other side of the fence too [who] are really having concerns with who has access to the bathrooms," he added.