South Carolina has asked the Supreme Court to block an appeals court order that exempts a transgender-identifying student from a state law banning students from using school restrooms inconsistent with their sex.
The application in South Carolina v. Doe, docketed by the nation’s highest court on Aug. 28, was directed to Chief Justice John Roberts, who oversees emergency appeals from the Palmetto State.
The state is asking the Supreme Court to halt an injunction the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued on Aug. 12 that requires a Berkeley County school to allow a female student who identifies as male to use boys’ restrooms. The injunction did not strike down a state law mandating that public school bathrooms be separated along the lines of sex but created an exception applying only to the respondent, identified in court papers as John Doe.
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said the state passed the law in question “to protect the privacy and safety of every child in our schools.”
“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,” Wilson said in a statement.
South Carolina Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver said the state law “is grounded in biological reality and protects the privacy, safety, and dignity of every child.
“No activist court should force schools to abandon common sense or put ideology ahead of student well-being.”
The application said the state law conditioned a segment of each public school district’s state funding on whether the district complies with a requirement that “it designate its multi-occupancy public school restrooms for use only by members of one sex, and that it limit entry into such restrooms to members of the designated sex.”
Doe sued the state, arguing that the restroom-related provision of the law violates the equal protection clause and Title IX, a federal civil rights law that forbids sex-based discrimination at any school that receives federal funding.
While the case was pending in the lower courts, the Supreme Court on June 18 in United States v. Skrmetti upheld Tennessee’s ban on providing transgender interventions such as cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers for minors experiencing gender dysphoria.
In a 6–3 decision, the high court disagreed with the Biden administration’s argument that the law should face higher legal scrutiny than had been applied by an appeals court.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit had previously upheld Tennessee’s law, stating that it passed “rational basis” review, which is a relatively low level of scrutiny to determine whether a law is constitutional.
South Carolina said in its application that the Fourth Circuit should have based its ruling on Skrmetti but instead relied on its own circuit precedent from a case called Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board. The Supreme Court declined to review the Grimm ruling in 2021, leaving it in place as a valid precedent applicable only to the Fourth Circuit.
The application argued that Grimm is a “discredited, outlier opinion” in which the Fourth Circuit held that a Virginia school board violated Title IX and the equal protection clause when it barred then-student Gavin Grimm, a female who identified as transgender, from using male restrooms.
The Skrmetti precedent undercuts Grimm, and the Supreme Court “should not allow the Fourth Circuit to apply Grimm here,” the application stated.
When Grimm was decided, the Fourth Circuit said there was a “growing consensus of courts” invalidating single-sex bathroom policies under Title IX and the equal protection clause. But nowadays, Grimm is the outlier decision, whose reasoning is endorsed only by the Fourth and Seventh Circuits, the application said.
The Sixth, Ninth, 10th, and 11th Circuits now hold that single-sex bathroom and locker room policies do not run afoul of Title IX or the equal protection clause as it relates to sex discrimination, according to South Carolina’s application.
The Supreme Court should presume the state law is constitutional and dissolve the injunction, especially given its ruling in Skrmetti, the application said.
Before the Fourth Circuit granted Doe’s request to be granted an exemption from the state law, U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel rejected Doe’s request to completely block the state law.
Because the Supreme Court has decided to hear cases about transgender-identifying individuals’ participation in sports, the parties in the case should return to the district court when those cases have been decided, he said.
The law is “plainly unsettled and in flux,” Gergel said in his July 23 ruling.
Gergel was referring to West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, two cases tackling the issue of males competing against women in sports. States have passed laws forbidding this practice, and in these cases, transgender-identifying youth have sued to overturn those laws.
In both cases, the plaintiffs say the laws violate the equal protection clause, as well as Title IX. The Supreme Court is expected to hear the two cases in its new term that begins in October.
Chief Justice Roberts has directed the respondent to reply to the application by 4 p.m. on Sept. 5.
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to Doe’s attorney, Alexandra Brodsky of Public Justice in Washington. No reply was received by publication time.
Sam Dorman and Stacy Robinson contributed to this report.
This article by Matthew Vadum appeared Sept. 1, 2025, in The Epoch Times. It was updated Sept. 2, 2025.