DENVER, Colorado — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, November 9, threw out a federal appeals court ruling that had revived a transgender detainee's civil rights lawsuit against the El Paso County sheriff, and sent the case back for another look. In an unsigned order on its November 9 order list, the Court granted the petition in Roybal v. Griffith, No. 25-442, vacated the judgment of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, and remanded the case “for further consideration in light of West Virginia v. B. P. J., 609 U. S. 958 (2026), and United States v. Skrmetti, 605 U. S. 495 (2025).” No justice noted a dissent. The order decides nothing about who is right in the underlying dispute — it instructs the appeals court to redo its analysis under the Supreme Court's two most recent decisions on how constitutional claims involving transgender people are to be judged.
Source: Supreme Court of the United States, Order List, Nov 9, 2026, as reported by The Digital Free Press
Lawyers call this move a GVR — grant, vacate and remand — and the Justice Department had asked the Court to take exactly this step. The petitioners are El Paso County Sheriff Joseph Roybal and other county officials. The respondent, Darlene Griffith, entered the El Paso County Jail in Colorado Springs as a pretrial detainee in 2020. What the Tenth Circuit does next will shape how jails and prisons across its six-state region may classify and search the people in their custody.
The case underneath the order
Griffith, who identifies as a woman, alleges in her complaint that she was assigned to a male housing unit at the jail and denied female underwear and lipstick that were available to female inmates, according to the Justice Department's summary of the complaint. She also challenged an intake body-cavity examination in which, according to the filings, a female officer examined the top half of her body and a male officer examined the bottom half. These are allegations in a civil complaint; they have not been proven in court, and the county officials dispute the claims. Griffith sued under the Constitution's equal protection and due process guarantees and the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches, together with federal disability statutes.
A federal district court dismissed the complaint. On February 19, 2025, a divided Tenth Circuit panel reversed in part, holding that Griffith had plausibly alleged violations of equal protection, due process and the Fourth Amendment — enough for those claims to proceed. Judge Tymkovich dissented, writing, as quoted in the government's brief, that Griffith “was treated identically to those with whom” Griffith “is similarly situated, biological males.” The panel's ruling did not decide that the jail had violated the Constitution; it decided only that the lawsuit could move forward past the pleading stage.
Why the Justice Department asked for exactly this order
The Court invited the solicitor general to weigh in last June, and the United States filed its brief on September 25, 2026, signed by Solicitor General D. John Sauer and Assistant Attorneys General Harmeet K. Dhillon and Brett A. Shumate. The brief argued that the Tenth Circuit decided the case “without the benefit” of B. P. J. and Skrmetti, and that those decisions “clarified the analysis of constitutional claims involving trans-identifying persons in ways that foreclose the claims” at issue. It urged the Court to grant, vacate and remand, while saying the questions “do not warrant this Court's plenary review at this time” — in other words, no full argument and no merits ruling, just a do-over below. The brief framed the first question presented as whether jail policies “that classify inmates based on biological sex, and that apply equally to inmates who self-identify with the opposite sex, are subject to heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause.” Twenty-three states, led by Kansas, and the Arizona Legislature also filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the county.
Source: Brief for the United States as Amicus Curiae, Sept 25, 2026 (Supreme Court docket 25-442)
What is solid
- The Supreme Court's November 9 order list granted the petition in Roybal v. Griffith, vacated the Tenth Circuit's judgment and remanded for further consideration in light of B. P. J. and Skrmetti; the order was unsigned and no dissent was noted
- The Justice Department's September 25 brief asked for a grant-vacate-remand and argued the Tenth Circuit lacked the benefit of the two newer decisions
- The Tenth Circuit's February 19, 2025 ruling was divided and held only that several claims were plausible at the pleading stage
- Griffith's allegations about housing, clothing items and the intake examination are claims in a complaint, summarised by the Justice Department — they are not court findings
What is only claimed
- Whether B. P. J. and Skrmetti actually foreclose Griffith's claims — the government says they do; Griffith's lawyers argued the appeals court decided only plausibility and that nothing in the ruling imperils sex-based jail classification
- What the Tenth Circuit will do on remand — it may reach the same result with new reasoning, narrow the claims, or dismiss them; the Supreme Court's order does not say
The other side of the case
Griffith's lawyers at the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center opposed Supreme Court review in a brief filed in November 2025 — before the B. P. J. decision existed. They wrote that “nothing about the decision below imperils prisons' or jails' abilities to segregate facilities based on sex,” arguing that the appeals court held only that the claims were plausible at the pleading stage and that the county would have “a chance to raise these arguments on remand.” That is, in substance, where the case now returns: the county gets to make its arguments again, this time under the legal framework the Supreme Court has since set out, and Griffith's lawyers will argue the claims survive it.
A grant-vacate-remand order is not a ruling that the appeals court got the case wrong on the merits, and it is not a ruling for either side. It wipes the earlier judgment off the books and tells the lower court to decide again under newer law. The practical effect in Roybal is immediate, though: the February 2025 ruling that had revived the lawsuit no longer stands, and the county officials no longer face a live judgment against their position while the Tenth Circuit reconsiders.
What happens next
The case returns to the Tenth Circuit, which will reconsider Griffith's equal protection, due process and search claims in light of B. P. J. and Skrmetti. No schedule has been announced. Whatever the appeals court decides, the losing side can again ask the Supreme Court to intervene — this time, potentially, for a full merits ruling on how the Equal Protection Clause applies to jail classification and search policies. The same legal question is being watched well beyond Colorado: jail and prison systems across the United States classify and search transgender detainees every day, and Monday's short order is the Supreme Court's clearest signal yet that those policies will be judged under its newest precedents, not the framework the Tenth Circuit applied in 2025. Awaaz Punjab will update this report when the Tenth Circuit sets a schedule or rules on remand.