A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled in favor of a transgender student's challenge to a Wisconsin school district's policy limiting his restroom usage — a big win for those seeking to advance transgender rights in the courts.

The decision of a unanimous three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit keeps in place a district court's preliminary injunction halting enforcement of the Kenosha Unified School District's policy against the student, Ash Whitaker.



"The School District has not demonstrated that it will suffer any harm from having to comply with the district court’s preliminary injunction order," the appeals court — which hears cases from Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin — held.

The appeals court upheld the lower court's rulings in favor of Whitaker on both statutory and constitutional grounds, finding that he is likely to succeed on his claim that he is protected from discrimination under the sex discrimination ban in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 because he is transgender and that the school district's policy violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The broad ruling in favor of transgender rights comes even as the Trump administration pulled back an Obama-era policy that pressed for recognition of transgender rights under existing civil rights laws.

The decision to withdraw the pro-transgender Title IX guidance came in late February. It, in turn, led the US Supreme Court to send back the case of Gavin Grimm, a Virginia student who had brought a similar lawsuit, to the lower courts. Although the justices had agreed back in 2016 to hear the case, the appeals court decision in Grimm's case had deferred to the Obama-era guidance on Title IX. After that guidance was withdrawn, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower courts so other arguments could be considered.