South Carolina has thrust itself into the national spotlight with a high-stakes legal battle over transgender students’ access to public school restrooms, a conflict that has deepened as similar debates play out in statehouses and courtrooms across the country. On August 28, 2025, state officials filed an emergency request with the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking permission to enforce a law that requires students to use bathrooms and locker rooms corresponding to their sex assigned at birth, rather than their gender identity.
The request came after the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier in August that a transgender student, identified in court documents as John Doe, could continue using the boys’ restrooms at his high school while his lawsuit challenging the state’s policy moves forward. The appeals court’s decision blocked South Carolina from enforcing a budget provision that had tied school funding to compliance with the bathroom restriction, at least as it pertained to Doe.
The Berkeley County School District, caught in the crossfire, now faces a difficult dilemma. According to USA TODAY, the district’s lawyers argued to the Supreme Court that they are “stuck between an impossible rock and hard place,” forced to choose between obeying the court order or risking noncompliance with federal policy under the Trump administration. The Trump administration has taken a hard line against schools that allow transgender students to use restrooms matching their gender identity, further complicating the legal landscape for school districts.
South Carolina’s law, enacted as part of the 2024 state budget, mandates that public school students use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their birth sex. The legislation is part of a broader wave of state-level efforts to restrict transgender rights, and it echoes similar measures that have passed or are under consideration in nearly 20 other states, including Texas. In Texas, the House recently passed Senate Bill 8, which would impose comparable restrictions on restroom access in public schools, universities, and other government buildings. That bill, which still awaits a final procedural vote before heading to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk, would also allow for fines of up to $25,000 for repeat violations and enable the attorney general’s office to investigate complaints from private citizens, according to The Texas Newsroom.
Supporters of these laws, like Texas State Representative Angelia Orr, argue that such measures are necessary to ensure privacy and safety in shared spaces. “When it comes to the dignity, privacy and safety of Texas women and girls — there is no compromise,” Orr said during the Texas House debate. “This is completely non negotiable.” Similar sentiments have been echoed by South Carolina officials, who told the Supreme Court that the issue “implicates a question fraught with emotions and differing perspectives” and urged the justices to “defer to state lawmakers pending appeal.”
But the backlash has been fierce and immediate. LGBTQ+ advocates, civil rights groups, and Democratic lawmakers have denounced the policies as discriminatory and harmful to transgender youth. Demonstrators protested outside the Texas House, and in South Carolina, the legal challenge brought by John Doe and his family alleges that the bathroom ban violates both federal law and the Constitution’s equal protection clause. “All students deserve to feel safe and supported in school, including my son,” Doe’s father said, as reported by USA TODAY.
Alexandra Brodsky, litigation director for Public Justice’s Students’ Civil Rights Project and part of Doe’s legal team, called South Carolina’s request to the Supreme Court “extraordinary.” She told CNN, “South Carolina wants the Supreme Court to take the extraordinary remedy of intervening in an ongoing lower court appeal – all because the state wants to stop one ninth grader from using boys’ restrooms while that appeal proceeds. No classmate has ever complained about our client using boys’ restrooms. Yet South Carolina is rushing to the Supreme Court to get a permission slip to subject him to state-mandated discrimination at school, including the school discipline that drove him out of middle school last year.”
The legal arguments now before the Supreme Court are rooted in precedent but colored by recent shifts in the national judiciary. In 2020, the 4th Circuit ruled in favor of Gavin Grimm, a transgender student in Virginia, finding that bathroom restrictions violated his rights under federal law and the Constitution. The Supreme Court declined to review that decision in 2021, allowing it to stand as controlling precedent within the 4th Circuit, which includes South Carolina. However, South Carolina Solicitor General Thomas Hydrick has argued that the appeals court’s reliance on what he called the “discredited outlier opinion” in the Grimm case is misguided, especially in light of recent Supreme Court moves.
Indeed, the Supreme Court has recently allowed states to ban gender-affirming care for minors and has agreed to review bans on transgender athletes participating in sports teams that align with their gender identity. South Carolina officials point to these developments as evidence that the legal tide may be turning in favor of state restrictions. Hydrick wrote in the state’s emergency application, “In recent years, a growing judicial consensus has recognized that this practice of ‘separating school bathrooms based on biological sex passes constitutional muster and comports with Title IX.’” He further argued that “an emergency stay of the Fourth Circuit’s injunction is warranted not only because Grimm was wrongly decided and should (and may soon) be overturned, but because in the absence of this Court’s immediate intervention, the State, the school district, and its students are suffering actual, ongoing, material harms—all from a mandatory injunction that disrupts the status quo in a preliminary posture in a case where the Plaintiffs are unlikely ultimately to prevail.”
In his concurring opinion for the appeals court, Chief Judge Albert Diaz offered a sharply contrasting view, emphasizing the practical realities for transgender students. “The boy who filed the lawsuit is a 14-year-old student who simply wishes to use the restroom. Doing so is a biological necessity. Doing so in restrooms that match his gender identity is his right under our precedent,” Diaz wrote. He added that South Carolina’s ban “openly defies the law.”
As the Supreme Court weighs whether to intervene, the stakes are high not just for John Doe, but for transgender students and public schools across the country. The outcome could set a major precedent, either reaffirming or undermining protections for transgender youth in educational settings. The decision is expected within weeks, and the case is being closely watched by advocates and opponents alike, both in South Carolina and nationwide.
Meanwhile, the broader fight over transgender rights in schools and public spaces shows no signs of abating. With Texas poised to join the ranks of states enacting strict bathroom laws and nearly 20 states already having adopted some form of restriction—many of which are entangled in ongoing legal battles—the issue is likely to remain at the forefront of America’s cultural and legal debates for the foreseeable future.
For now, the nation waits as the Supreme Court considers whether to step in, knowing that the decision will reverberate far beyond the walls of any single school bathroom.
