Page:Adams ex rel. Kasper v. School Board of St. Johns County, Florida (2022).pdf/111

 components. In short, the majority opinion’s definition of “biological sex” has no business driving the framing and resolution of this case.

With these truths out of the way, the majority opinion’s definition of “biological sex” permits it to declare that Adams is a biological female and that his gender identity is irrelevant to this case. See (arguing that “Adams’s gender identity is … not dispositive for our adjudication of [his] equal protection claim”). For all the reasons I just summarized, that is wrong.

The majority opinion’s counterfactual “biological sex” definition obscures the nuance of this case. The majority opinion invokes Supreme Court sex-discrimination cases that generally recognize “biological” differences between men and women. See, e.g., (“[T]he district court did not make a finding equating gender identity as akin to biological sex. Nor could the district court have made such a finding that would have legal significance. To do so would refute the Supreme Court’s longstanding recognition that ‘sex … is an immutable characteristic determined solely by the accident of birth.’” (quoting Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677, 686 (1973))); see also, e.g., Nguyen v. INS, 533 U.S. 53, 73 (2001) (“To fail to acknowledge even our most basic biological differences … risks making the guarantee of equal protection superficial, and