Florida Appeals Court Upholds Local School Board’s Transgender Bathroom Policy

A gender-neutral bathroom is seen at a restaurant in Washington, D.C., on May 5, 2016. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

A federal appeals court in Florida has ruled in favor of a local school district, upholding its policy of preventing transgender students from using bathrooms of their choice.

The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals announced its 7–4 decision (pdf) on Dec. 30, saying that the St. Johns County School Board did not violate the U.S. Constitution or Title IX, when barring transgender student Drew Adams from using boys’ bathrooms.

Judge Barbara Lagoa, who wrote for the majority, said that the school board’s bathroom policy “advances the important governmental objective of protecting students’ privacy in school bathrooms.”

“A policy can lawfully classify on the basis of biological sex without unlawfully discriminating on the basis of transgender status,” Lagoa added.

Adams, who was born a biological female, sued the school district in 2017 when the student was a junior at the Allen D. Nease High School in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. At the time, the district asked Adams to use single-stall, gender-neutral bathrooms or girls’ bathrooms at the school.

A district court sided with Adams in July 2018, before the school board appealed the decision in 2019.

In August 2020, a three-judge panel from the appeals court upheld the lower court’s ruling. Then-Judge Beverly B. Martin, who wrote the court’s decision (pdf), said at the time that the school board’s bathroom policy “singled [Adams] out for different treatment because of his transgender status,” causing “psychological and dignitary harm.”

“A public school may not punish its students for gender nonconformity. Neither may a public school harm transgender students by establishing arbitrary, separate rules for their restroom use,” Martin wrote.

The appeals court eventually vacated the panel’s ruling after the school board requested an “en banc,” or full court, hearing. The full appeals court held a hearing in February 2022.

The appeals court’s decision on Friday was split along party lines, as the four dissenting judges were appointed by Democrat presidents and the seven judges were appointed by Republican presidents. Lagoa and five others were appointed by former President Donald Trump.

The five-year legal battle could play out for longer, as the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to take up the issue.

Opinion

Lagoa also wrote that it was “wrong” to argue that the school board’s bathroom policy was based on “impermissible stereotypes associated with Adams’s transgender status.”

“The bathroom policy separates bathrooms based on biological sex, which is not a stereotype,” she added.

In terms of privacy, Lagoa said the policy shielded Adams from the opposite sex.

“The School Board’s bathroom policy is clearly related to—indeed, is almost a mirror of—its objective of protecting the privacy interests of students to use the bathroom away from the opposite sex and to shield their bodies from the opposite sex in the bathroom, which, like a locker room or shower facility, is one of the spaces in a school where such bodily exposure is most likely to occur,” Lagoa wrote.

Lagoa also wrote that the “plain and ordinary meaning of ‘sex’ in 1972, when Title IX went into effect, allows schools to provide separate bathrooms based on biological sex.

“[T]o accommodate transgender students, the School Board has provided single-stall, sex-neutral bathrooms, which Title IX neither requires nor prohibits. Nothing about this bathroom policy violates Title IX,” she added.

Title IX is a federal law that prohibits “sex-based discrimination” in federally funded educational settings.

Lagoa also warned that the ruling could “transform schools’ living facilities, locker rooms, showers, and sports teams into sex-neutral areas and activities.”

“Whether Title IX should be amended to equate ‘gender identity’ and ‘transgender status’ with ‘sex’ should be left to Congress—not the courts,” she added.

Dissenting Opinion

Judge Jill Pryor, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, wrote one of the dissenting opinions.

Pryor said that Adams was “forced to endure a stigmatizing and humiliating walk of shame—past the boys’ bathrooms and into a single-stall ‘gender neutral’ bathroom,” each time he needed to use the bathroom.

She added that the court majority “labels Adams as unfit for equal protection based on his transgender status.”

According to Pryor, the school board branded Adams with a “badge of inferiority.”

“The Constitution and laws of the United States promise that no person will have to wear such a badge because of an immutable characteristic,” Pryor wrote. “The majority opinion breaks that promise.”

Tara Borelli, a lawyer with Lambda Legal representing Adams, issued a statement calling the ruling “aberrant.”

“This is an aberrant ruling that contradicts the rulings of every other circuit to consider the question across the country,” Borelli said. “We will be reviewing and evaluating this dangerous decision over the weekend.”

Reuters contributed to this report.