Page:Adams ex rel. Kasper v. School Board of St. Johns County, Florida (2020).pdf/12

 The School Board concedes its policy broadly “discriminates on the basis of sex” by requiring “biological females to use girls’ bathrooms and biological males to use boys’ bathrooms.” But Mr. Adams describes the discrimination more narrowly. He believes the bathroom policy discriminates against him because, by being transgender, he defies gender norms and stereotypes. He explains that by defining “boy” and “girl” based on “biological sex,” or sex assigned at birth, the School Board divides restrooms based on a characteristic that “punishes transgender students and favors non-transgender students.” He further points out that the policy forces transgender students (and only transgender students) to choose between using a single-stall restroom in isolation from their peers or using a restroom that does not match their gender identity and causes them humiliation and insult. Mr. Adams says this choice is no choice at all, so the bathroom policy has the effect of excluding him from all communal restrooms.

It is Mr. Adams who properly tees up the constitutional issue in this case. The School Board’s bathroom policy singles out transgender students for differential treatment they are transgender: “ students will be given access to a gender-neutral restroom and will not be required to use the restroom corresponding to their biological sex.” The policy emphasized the School Board’s position that no law required it to “allow a  student access to the restroom corresponding to their consistently asserted []gender