Page:Adams ex rel. Kasper v. School Board of St. Johns County, Florida (2020).pdf/3



The District Court developed a thorough factual record after a three-day bench trial of Mr. Adams’s claims. , 318 F. Supp. 3d 1293, 1298–1310 (M.D. Fla. 2018). We recite those facts here, as necessary.

Drew Adams was born in 2000. At birth, doctors examined Mr. Adams and recorded his sex as female. That female designation has vexed Mr. Adams throughout his young life. As Mr. Adams entered puberty, he suffered significant anxiety and depression about his developing body, and he sought the help of a therapist and a psychiatrist. In the eighth grade, after introspection and with the help of therapy, Mr. Adams came to realize he was transgender. He revealed to his parents that he was a boy, not a girl. Together, Mr. Adams and his family met with mental health professionals, who confirmed Adams was transgender. In time, Mr. Adams’s psychiatrist diagnosed him with gender dysphoria, a condition of “debilitating distress and anxiety resulting from the incongruence between an individual’s gender identity and birth-assigned sex.” Mr. Adams’s “gender identity”—his consistent, internal sense of gender—is male, but the sex assigned to him at birth was female.

To treat and alleviate Mr. Adams’s gender dysphoria, the psychiatrist recommended Adams socially transition to living as a boy. This included cutting