Va. School Board to Pay Trans Student $1.3M

The Virginia school board that fought a former student for years has finally agreed to settle. The Gloucester County School Board will turn over $1.3 million to cover attorney's fees after effectively losing their case when the Supreme Court declined to hear it, the Washington Post reports. Gavin Grimm, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, sued when the school board, in defiance of his high school principal, demanded that he use the girl’s room. Grimm was assigned female at birth, but started high school with a new name and was taking hormone therapy, NBC News reports.

Grimm and the ACLU spent six years fighting the ruling that forced him to use a private bathroom or the girl’s room. “Being forced to use the nurse’s room, a private bathroom, and the girl’s room was humiliating for me,” Grimm said in June. “Having to go to out-of-the-way bathrooms severely interfered with my education,” he said. Grimm is 22 now, and long out of high school. The settlement will cover his attorney fees and other costs. He’s still in a tussle with Gloucester schools, though, which still lists him as female on his high school transcript even though all of his other paperwork—passport, birth certificate, ID card—show that he’s a man, the AP reports. (More Gavin Grimm stories.)