Federal judge rules transgender student can play on girl's tennis team in Virginia

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The Hanover County School Board in Virginia can't block an 11-year-old transgender student from playing on a girls’ middle school tennis team, U.S. District Court Judge M. Hannah Lauck ruled last week. The student is currently engaged in a lawsuit against the school board for discrimination.

Lauck issued a preliminary injunction on the matter Friday, saying the plaintiff "established that the Board excluded her, on the basis of sex, from participating in an education program when it denied her application to try out for (and if selected, to participate on) her school’s girls’ tennis team." The lawsuit only identifies the student as "Janie Doe."

The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia filed a lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiff in July. The suit alleges that the Hanover County school board discriminated against the student by not allowing them to play after successfully trying out for the tennis team.

(Erica Denhoff/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images/File)

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Lauck, who oversees the Eastern District of Virginia and was appointed by then-President Obama in June 2014, argued that preventing the student from joining the team "denies her the opportunity to play school tennis entirely or demands that she contravene her social transition in order to participate in school athletics."

"Because Janie Doe faces a litany of harms ranging from medical regression, social isolation and stigma, financial and logistical burdens, and the dignitary harms of either ‘outing’ her as transgender or communicating that transgender students are not welcomed