In 2014, the Gloucester county school board voted to ban Grimm, then 15, from using the boysâ bathrooms, even though heâd been living openly as a boy for months and using the restroom without incident. The policy turned deeply intimate facts of Grimmâs life into a media spectacle. With the ACLU, he sued to defend his rights to use facilities that matched his gender, launching a groundbreaking national case on bathroom access. Grimm became an LGBTQ+ icon, celebrated by Laverne Cox at the Grammys and interviewed by Whoopi Goldberg on The View. He eventually won a landmark federal decision asserting trans youthâs constitutional protections against discrimination. [...]
And while Grimm became a civil rights trailblazer, the case did not secure him stability or financial security. The Pride parade invites have stopped coming, and like so many other marginalized trans people, Grimm has faced significant mental health challenges and struggles with poverty. He recently lost his housing, and is now facing homelessness.
âIâm someone who has had worldwide visibility. I represent an outer crust of privilege most people will never see, and I cannot make ends meet no matter how hard I try,â he says. [...]
Much of his family rejected him [after coming out], but many friends and teachers were supportive as he entered 10th grade as a boy and clearly more comfortable in his skin. He initially used a private nurseâs restroom, but it was inconveniently located; peers and staff noted his long bathroom breaks, leaving him alienated and humiliated. So the principal and guidance counselor agreed to let him use the boysâ restroom, and for two months, he had no issues.
But gossip circulated outside school and on a community Facebook forum, where people posted vicious comments. Friends defending him online faced harassment.
âIt was the adults who made it a problem, because their mentality spread to their kids,â recalls Evelyn Hronec, another friend. âThese were grown adults talking about a 16-year-oldâs genitals. It was vile.â
At school board meetings in 2014, speakers stood feet away from Grimm, misgendering him, asking questions about his body and transition, calling him names and demanding he be kept out of boysâ facilities in the name of âsafetyâ. In one speech, Grimm pleaded for the opportunity to âuse the restroom in peaceâ. When a man called him a âfreakâ and likened him to an animal, Deirdre lunged out of her seat, she recalls. âI was fighting for his life.â [...]
In 2021, the supreme court allowed Grimmâs victory to stand, and the school board was ordered to pay $1.3m in attorneyâs fees.
Grimm, however, only got a symbolic $1.
To secure damages, Grimm wouldâve had to give the oppositionâs lawyers access to his medical records to scrutinize the cause and extent of his emotional distress, a process he couldnât stomach after years of fighting. The idea heâd have to prove his anguish was unbelievable to his mom, who canât shake the memories of her son becoming suicidal.
Grimm doesnât regret moving on without damages. But he desperately couldâve used financial help â especially as the trauma of his childhood began to catch up with him.