Kimberly Polk v. Montgomery County Public Schools

4th Cir. · 2026 · CourtListener

Cite as Polk v. Montgomery Cnty. Pub. Schs., 166 F.4th 400 (4th Cir. 2026)

Circuit4th Cir.Speech & religious objections Schools & education EmploymentFavorable

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Docket

No. 25-1136

Nature of suit: 3442 Jobs
Date filed: 2025-02-11
Last filing: 2026-02-19
Terminated: 2026-01-28

Proceedings

4th Cir. · No. 25-1136 · Docket on CourtListener

9 documents

Polk v. Montgomery Cnty. Pub. Schs., No. 25-1136 (4th Cir. filed Feb. 11, 2025)

Opinion: 4th Cir. · On CourtListener

The court's opinion, in full text on this site

Polk v. Montgomery Cnty. Pub. Schs., 166 F.4th 400 (4th Cir. 2026)

Timeline

2025-02-11 Filed: 4th Cir., No. 25-1136
2025-10-23 Oral argument, 4th Cir.
2026-01-28 Closed: 4th Cir., No. 25-1136

Oral argument

4th Cir. · read transcript

2025-10-23 · 57 min · Panel: J. Harvie Wilkinson III, Robert B. King, Stephanie D. Thacker

Oral Argument, Polk v. Montgomery Cnty. Pub. Schs., No. 25-1136 (4th Cir. Oct. 23, 2025)

Filings on file (10 in 9 docket entries)

Filings on file
Date	No.	Document	Type	Pages	Source
2025-02-11	1	Document		1	PDF CL
	9	Document		3	PDF CL
	33	UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT DISCLOSURE STATEMENT		80	PDF CL
2024-05-21	34	JOINT APPENDIX		205	PDF CL
	35	BRIEF FOR APPELLEES		65	PDF CL
	36	REPLY BRIEF		33	PDF CL
2026-01-28	69	Main document not on file

	69-1	PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI: The time to file a petition for writ of	Notice of Judgment	3	PDF CL
	69-2	Judgment order		2	PDF CL
2026-02-19	70	Document		1	PDF CL
		Document			PDF CL

Browse and search the 10 court documents in the archive for this case.

Litigation

Court cases about transgender and other LGBTQ+ people · federal & state courts

Cases tracked

Case name Court Level Issue / type Circuit Outcome Year ≥ Year ≤

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Case	Court	Level	Cir.	Year	Issue / type	Outcome	Docs

Every case in the corpus. Click a case name for its overview; click any column to sort, again to reverse. Each case has one main issue and may raise others (shown as "also…"); the Issue filter finds a case by either. Issues were checked case by case in September 2026. Level, circuit and outcome come from the coded caselaw dataset, so some rows are blank where a case hasn't been coded yet.

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Cases by issue

Every tracked case once, under its main issue, split by the coded direction of its final ruling (the same reading as "Reached a final ruling" below): favorable or adverse to the LGBTQ-rights claim, or mixed. The empty part of each bar is cases with no coded ruling at the trial, circuit or Supreme Court stage yet, which is most of them; it is not a claim that they have no outcome. Choose a bar to list its cases.

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Reached a final ruling

The coded direction at the HIGHEST stage a case reached — trial-level, circuit-court or Supreme Court only. A preliminary-injunction ruling never counts as final, and a "procedural, no direction" or "unclear" coding is excluded rather than shown as an outcome.

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Case duration

Filed to terminated, from real CourtListener docket dates, among cases where EVERY tracked docket has terminated (an open appellate docket alongside a closed district one is pending, not resolved). No stage-by-stage date exists in this corpus, so only this one span is shown; dates cover only the tracked-docket tier — see the coverage note below the numbers.

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Cases by circuit

A real geographic map, states shaded by their circuit's case count relative to the busiest circuit (linear). The Federal Circuit has no state territory of its own (its jurisdiction is subject matter, not geography) and so never paints here, but still appears in the list and the table. Select a circuit below for its final-ruling mix.

Table view (stages, durations and circuits)

Expert witnesses

Filter Appears in

A curated roster of the recurring expert witnesses in this litigation, with every declaration, expert report, affidavit, deposition and trial-testimony document the corpus holds for each, grouped by case. Coverage is limited by what has been pulled: expert material is heavily attachment-borne, so a witness who testified in ten cases may show fewer here, and some documents are marked in a larger filing — the testimony sits inside an appendix or exhibit set rather than as its own entry.

Judges

Filter Appointed by Coded rulings

The record counts how the judge voted, not how the case came out. Dissents and concurrences are parsed from the opinions themselves ("NIEMEYER, Circuit Judge, dissenting"), so a judge who dissented is scored against the panel's result — without that, Judge Niemeyer read 4–3 favorable to trans claimants. Partial dissents are shown but left out of the tally. Votes come from separate-writing headings and from the opinion's own joinder block ("Judge Richardson wrote a dissenting opinion, in which Judge Wilkinson, Judge Niemeyer… joined"), so a judge who joins a dissent without writing one still counts. Judges are resolved to real people against the Federal Judicial Center directory using the deciding court — there are 32 federal judges named Smith, and two Judge Pryors on the Eleventh Circuit. 195 ambiguous name/court pairs were dropped rather than merged, and a case with no opinion text in the corpus keeps the panel result for want of anything better. Small numbers are small numbers: three rulings is not a tendency.