Page:Adams ex rel. Kasper v. School Board of St. Johns County, Florida (2022).pdf/121

 employment “because of … sex.” Id. at 1738 (citing 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1)). Because the parties “concede[d] the point for argument’s sake,” the Supreme Court assumed, but did not decide, that the term “sex” in the statute “refer[ed] only to the biological distinctions between male and female.” Id. at 1739. In making that assumption, the Supreme Court assumed that the term “sex” did not encompass a person’s status as transgender or homosexual, separate and apart from his or her status as “male” or “female.” Id.

Even with these assumptions about the scope of “sex,” the Supreme Court concluded that Title VII prohibits employers from firing employees “because” they are transgender. Why? “[B]ecause it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being … transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.” Id. at 1741. The Supreme Court explained that “[w]hen an employer fires an employee because she is … transgender, two causal factors [are] in play—both the individual’s sex and something else (the sex … with which the individual identifies).” Id. at 1742. For this reason, the Court observed, discrimination based on transgender status was “inextricably bound up with sex” and thus proscribed by Title VII. Id.

Although Bostock is a Title VII case, Bostock’s reasoning maps onto Adams’s exclusion from the boys’ restrooms at Nease High School. Adams was excluded for one of two reasons: either because the School District concluded that (1) Adams was a “biological girl” or (2) Adams was not a “biological boy.” Either way, Adams was barred from the boys’ restrooms based on a reason