Page:Adams ex rel. Kasper v. School Board of St. Johns County, Florida (2020).pdf/71

 a condition on the grant of federal moneys, it must do so unambiguously.” Id. This requirement unquestionably applies when courts interpret Title IX. See ''Davis ex rel. D. v. Monroe Cty. Bd. of Educ.'', 526 U.S. 629, 649–50 (1999). It also applies when the appellant fails to press the issue in the district court. See Jefferson v. Sewon Am., Inc., 891 F.3d 911, 923 (11th Cir. 2018) (“[P]arties cannot waive the application of the correct law.”). So even if the majority were correct that “sex” was ambiguous, Title IX still would not prohibit the Board’s actions. Instead, the Board would lose the protection of the bathroom safe harbor only if the meaning of “sex” unambiguously did not turn on reproductive function.

For its part, the district court ruled that the Board violated Title IX for different but equally flawed reasons. It first ruled that the meaning of “sex” in Title IX was ambiguous because the statute did not define the term and dictionary definitions of “sex” were not “so universally clear” at the time. It then held that our decision in Glenn v. Brumby, 663 F.3d 1312, and the Supreme Court’s decision in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228 (1989) (plurality opinion), supported its conclusion that “sex” in Title IX “includes ‘gender identity’ for purposes of its application to transgender students.”

A statutory term is not ambiguous solely because a statute does not define it or because an isolated dictionary suggests a divergent meaning. See Brown v. Gardner, 513 U.S. 115, 118 (1994) (“Ambiguity is a creature not of definitional