Seamus Johnston had sued the University of Pittsburgh in federal court, claiming that banning him from the male locker room violated his Constitutional and civil rights.

Photo courtesy of Transgender Law Center Seamus Johnston

A transgender man and his former university settled a lawsuit that argued the school violated his rights by banning him from male locker rooms, both parties announced Tuesday. The case is one of at least four federal lawsuits in the United States that argues that Constitution and civil rights laws entitle transgender students access to school restrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity — together, they form a sort of legal counterpoint to high-profile state legislative efforts, such as those in North Carolina and Tennessee, to ban trans students from those facilities.

Seamus Johnston sued the University of Pittsburgh in 2014 for banning him from the locker rooms and eventually expelling him, arguing in U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania that the school violated Title IX of the Education Act of 1972 and the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

While details of the agreement are confidential, a joint statement describes recent changes the school has adopted concerning transgender students, including rules that allow those students to use school restrooms that correspond with their gender identity. The university also created gender-neutral housing, according to the statement, which added that the school will establish a working group to advise officials on transgender students’ access to gender-specific spaces that match their gender. “This is definitely a victory," Ilona Turner, who is legal director of the Transgender Law Center and one of the lawyers representing Johnston, told BuzzFeed News.

"Schools can create a win-win situation."

The settlement, she said, proves "schools can create a win-win situation."

The statement does not speak specifically to the issue of locker rooms, but, Turner said in an interview, it does “refer to all gender-specific spaces.” The debate has escalated in the past couple years over whether existing civil rights laws — particularly Title IX — guarantee transgender students access to school facilities that correspond with their gender. Title IX bans sex-based discrimination, and both LGBT advocacy groups and the Obama administration have argued it thus bans transgender discrimination as a form of sex discrimination. No student has won such an argument in federal court, however. One case is pending in a district court in Michigan, Tooley v. Van Buren Public Schools. Johnston’s case and another case in Virginia, G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board, lost at the U.S. district court. Both Johnston and the Virginia student have taken their cases to federal appeals courts.

Citing those two lower-court losses, conservative politicians and advocacy groups have argued bans on sex discrimination do not, in fact, apply to transgender discrimination.

But by reaching a settlement, Turner said they have bent the legal arc of toward a win — or at least not a loss — for transgender students.

AP / Keith Srakocic