Florida School Loses Bathroom Discrimination Case to Transgender Student

Yet another court has ruled in favor of a transgender student's right to use the bathroom according to their gender identity. But unlike many of the previous judicial rulings we've blogged about on this topic, which have been in the context of preliminary relief, this court's ruling came after an actual trial. This means that rather than predicting the plaintiff's likely success on the merits, the court in this case had the opportunity to conclude that the plaintiff did in fact succeed on the merits. It awarded the plaintiff, a transgender high school student whose gender identity is male, a permanent injunction that permits him to use the boys' bathroom at Nease High School in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, as well as $1000 in damages.

If you've followed other cases like this, the reasoning employed by this court is consistent and familiar. Its Equal Protection analysis considered the school's bathroom usage policy, which was based on student's biological or birth sex, under intermediate scrutiny, a test that requires the school to present an important justification and reasonably tailored means. The school predictably argued that its policy served purposes like privacy and safety, but the court rejected them as logically inconsistent with the policy itself. All students can access privacy by using the stalls or one of several single-user bathrooms in the building. Nor was there any evidence to support the idea that a transgender student's presence in the boy's bathroom posed a safety risk. The plaintiff had used the boys' bathroom for a six-week period before the school banned him, during which time no problems occurred. Nor is there any evidence to suggest that a transgender student is more likely than any other student to threaten the safety of other users. The court also favored the plaintiff's Title IX claim, rejecting the school board's argument that because Title IX and its regulations permit bathroom facilities to be segregated based on "sex" that necessarily means biological sex to the exclusion of considerations of gender identity. Instead, the court concluded that "the meaning of 'sex' in Title IX includes 'gender identity' for purposes of its application to transgender students."

Adams v. Sch. Bd. of St. Johns Cty., Fla., 2018 WL 3583843 (M.D. Fla. July 26, 2018).