Gavin Grimm just wants to do something most of us do every day without a second thought: use the bathroom that aligns with his gender. But the 17-year-old needs to get approval from the highest court in the country, and it’s a fight two years in the making.
A stirring new video from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has taken up Grimm’s case, follows the trans teen as he discusses and prepares for his Supreme Court hearing this spring. It will mark the first time the Supreme Court is hearing a case regarding transgender rights, and the decision will inarguably set the tone for trans rights moving forward.
“Being a high school student going to the Supreme Court certainly changed my narrative from the traditional high school experience,” Grimm says in the video.
“I am just a human. I am just a boy.”
Grimm has been in the spotlight since 2015, when he opposed his Virginia high school’s policy that requires students to use the restroom “corresponding to their ‘biological genders.'” The policy was enacted in December 2014 after parents complained about Grimm using the boys’ restroom.
Grimm sued — and, through a series of cases and appeals, he ended up at the door of the Supreme Court.
“I realize now this is a lot bigger than myself, and my greater goal now is to try to make things better for the people that come after me,” he says. “I can’t speak for everybody, but there are things that need to be spoken about.”
While he tells his story, the four-minute video shows Grimm getting a custom suit for his hearing made by Bindle & Keep, a New York City-based suit company that specializes in dressing transgender, nonbinary and queer people.
As one ACLU staff attorney says in the video, Grimm is on his way to becoming a historic name for the LGBTQ community, representing the needs and rights of transgender people across the country.
“I am not the only transgender student in Gloucester County,” Grimm says in a school board meeting recorded two years ago, featured in the ACLU video. “And I deserve the rights of every other human being.”
