Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday spoke in support of an LGBT Pride Month event that the Justice Department will hold next week that will honor Gavin Grimm, the transgender teen at the heart of the transgender bathroom debate.
Sessions was asked by an intern about the White House's lack of recognition for LGBT Pride Month and responded that the Justice Department would "celebrate" LGBT pride next week.
"We are going to have a pride group in this very room, I think next week I believe it is. And so that's perfectly appropriate and we will protect and defend and celebrate that — and protect the rights of all transgender persons," Sessions said Thursday.
Grimm, 17, was barred from using the boys' bathroom after the Gloucester County School Board enacted a policy in December 2014 requiring students to use the bathroom that corresponds with their biological gender.
Sessions also spoke of ordering a review about recent killings of transgender individuals.
"I received a letter expressing concern about the sudden transgender persons who had been killed... and so I, first thing, directed the civil rights division to look into those ... to see if there was any uniform attack, or if there was just a uniform hostility that would result in these murders, and to review each one of those cases that were sent to me," Sessions said.
"And they have done that, and I think it's possible that they're going to re-open one and solve it as a result of that."
The Supreme Court sent the decision back to the lower courts in March after the Trump administration reversed an Obama-era rule directing schools to let transgender students use the bathroom of their choice.