USCA11 Case: 18-13592 Date Filed: 07/14/2021 Page: 2 of 80
support among our colleagues, we vacate the opinion issued on August 7, 2020, Adams ex rel. Kasper v. School Board of St. Johns County, 968 F.3d 1286 (11th Cir. 2020), and replace it with this one. This revised opinion does not reach the Title IX question and reaches only one ground under the Equal Protection Clause instead of the three Equal Protection rulings we made in the August 7 opinion.
Drew Adams is a young man and recent graduate of Nease High School in Florida’s St. Johns County School District (the “School District”). Mr. Adams is transgender, meaning when he was born, doctors assessed his sex and wrote “female” on his birth certificate, but today Mr. Adams knows “with every fiber of [his] being” that he is a boy. While Mr. Adams attended Nease High School, school officials considered him a boy in all respects but one: he was forbidden to use the boys’ restroom. Instead, Mr. Adams had the option of using the multi-stall girls’ restrooms, which he found profoundly “insult[ing].” Or he could use a single-stall gender-neutral bathroom, which he found “isolati[ng],” “depress[ing],” “humiliating,” and burdensome. After unsuccessful negotiations with the School District over his bathroom use, Mr. Adams brought suit against the St. Johns County School Board (the “School Board”)[1] through his next friend and mother, Ms. Erica Adams Kasper. He asserted violations of his rights under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 (“Title IX”), 20 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq., and the
- ↑ The School Board is the School District’s governing body and comprises five members.
2
