Page:Adams ex rel. Kasper v. School Board of St. Johns County, Florida (2021).pdf/21

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USCA11 Case: 18-13592 Date Filed: 07/14/2021 Page: 21 of 80

insistent than any other boy.” R. Doc. 192 at 47.^[1]

The dissent’s reliance on dictionary definitions, see Dissenting Op. at 42, fails to provide an adequate response to the policy’s arbitrariness. Dictionaries naturally capture the differing usages of the term “sex.” See, e.g., Sex, Black’s Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019) (“1. The sum of the peculiarities of structure and function that distinguish a male from a female organism; gender.”). But we mean “sex” the way the state of Florida does. And as a court of law, we cannot simply ignore the legal definition of sex the state has already provided us, as reflected in the official documentation of Mr. Adams’s sex as male on his driver’s license and birth certificate. Contra Dissenting Op. at 41–42. In any event, the ruling in this opinion does not turn on which definition of sex one adopts—ours or the dissent’s—because the School District’s policy is arbitrary either way. As we’ve

↑ It is unfortunate that the dissent appears to liken Mr. Adams’s use of the boys’ bathroom as somehow comparable to people who “commit tax fraud, evade the draft, and report inaccurate information on the census,” Dissenting Op. at 44—in short, those who lie, deceive, and demonstrate “evasion.” Id. Mr. Adams has been nothing but honest. Mr. Adams says he is a boy, and he has the legal documentation to support it. He has plainly and forthrightly self-reported. Even if one does not take Mr. Adams at his word, surely one must defer to the status given him by the state of Florida.

In response, the dissent goes so far as to say that Mr. Adams’s government-issued documents provide “inaccurate information.” Id. at 47. The dissent again ignores that the School District’s policy itself accepts and relies on government-issued documentation provided at the time of enrollment. Meanwhile, the dissent argues without any apparent trace of irony that a system of “self-reporting” and relying on “supporting legal documentation” should be an “accurate method” for the schools to assign bathroom use by sex. Id. at 43–44, 48.

In other words, the dissent appears to say both that government-issued documents are “inaccurate” while saying elsewhere that “legal documentation” is “accurate.” We submit that the contradictory positions taken by the dissent are reflective of the policy’s arbitrariness.

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[1] It is unfortunate that the dissent appears to liken Mr. Adams’s use of the boys’ bathroom as somehow comparable to people who “commit tax fraud, evade the draft, and report inaccurate information on the census,” Dissenting Op. at 44—in short, those who lie, deceive, and demonstrate “evasion.” Id. Mr. Adams has been nothing but honest. Mr. Adams says he is a boy, and he has the legal documentation to support it. He has plainly and forthrightly self-reported. Even if one does not take Mr. Adams at his word, surely one must defer to the status given him by the state of Florida.

In response, the dissent goes so far as to say that Mr. Adams’s government-issued documents provide “inaccurate information.” Id. at 47. The dissent again ignores that the School District’s policy itself accepts and relies on government-issued documentation provided at the time of enrollment. Meanwhile, the dissent argues without any apparent trace of irony that a system of “self-reporting” and relying on “supporting legal documentation” should be an “accurate method” for the schools to assign bathroom use by sex. Id. at 43–44, 48.

In other words, the dissent appears to say both that government-issued documents are “inaccurate” while saying elsewhere that “legal documentation” is “accurate.” We submit that the contradictory positions taken by the dissent are reflective of the policy’s arbitrariness.

[1]