As an update to our previous posts (here and here) about bathroom access rights for transgender individuals, there are new developments in the North Carolina “bathroom bill” debacle. On August 26, a North Carolina federal court blocked the University of North Carolina from applying the state’s controversial bathroom bill. The bill requires transgender people to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their sex at birth rather than the gender with which they identify.

In a lengthy order filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, Judge Thomas D. Schroeder granted a preliminary injunction on the grounds that the bathroom bill likely violates Title IX’s prohibition against sex discrimination in education and that the transgender plaintiffs would suffer irreparable harm if the bill were to be imposed.  Notably, the preliminary injunction applies only to the three plaintiffs who sued in this case.  The question remains as to the bathroom bill’s broader fate.