Page:Adams ex rel. Kasper v. School Board of St. Johns County, Florida (2020).pdf/2

 when he was born, doctors assessed his sex and wrote “female” on his birth certificate, but today Mr. Adams knows “with every fiber of [his] being” that he is a boy. While Mr. Adams attended Nease High School, school officials considered him a boy in all respects but one: he was forbidden to use the boys’ restroom. Instead, Mr. Adams had the option of using the multi-stall girls’ restrooms, which he found profoundly “insult[ing].” Or he could use a single-stall gender-neutral bathroom, which he found “isolati[ng],” “depress[ing],” “humiliating,” and burdensome. After unsuccessful negotiations with the St. Johns County School District over his bathroom use, Mr. Adams brought suit against the St. Johns County School Board (the “School Board”) through his next friend and mother, Ms. Erica Adams Kasper. He asserted violations of his rights under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act [sic] of 1972 (“Title IX”), 20 U.S.C. § 1681, and the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. After a bench trial, the District Court granted him relief on both claims.

This case calls upon us to decide whether the St. Johns County School District’s policy barring Mr. Adams from the boys’ restroom squares with the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection and Title IX’s prohibition of sex discrimination. We conclude it does not. We affirm the District Court’s decision on both questions.