USCA11 Case: 18-13592 Date Filed: 07/14/2021 Page: 15 of 80
beverage once acquired (even after purchase by their 18-20-year-old female companions).” Id. at 204, 97 S. Ct. at 460. Thus, the Court decided that the statute violated the Fourteenth Amendment because its terms did not achieve its statutory objective. Id.
The same is true here. We set aside for now that the policy treats transgender students differently than non-transgender students. And we will assume for the sake of argument that students’ privacy interests are advanced by preventing transgender students from using the bathrooms corresponding to, like in Mr. Adams’s case, their governmentally-recognized legal sex.[1] The policy still runs afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment because it does not even succeed in treating all transgender students alike. It is arbitrary that some transgender students—like Mr. Adams—are restricted by the bathroom policy, while others are beyond its reach. Just as the statute in Craig did not prevent young men from driving after drinking 3.2% beer, the bathroom policy fails to exclude every transgender student from the restroom in the way the School District seeks to do. The designation of a student’s sex on his school enrollment documents is not a “legitimate, accurate proxy” for assigning a student to a particular bathroom to protect student privacy. See id. at 204, 97 S. Ct. at 460; Clark v. Jeter, 486 U.S.
- ↑ The School District’s privacy concerns are not borne out by the record. The District could not point to a single incident of a transgender student using a restroom acting in a manner that invaded another student’s privacy. See also infra at 22–24.
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