USCA11 Case: 18-13592 Date Filed: 07/14/2021 Page: 27 of 80
than engage with the legality of the policy, the dissent rewrites the record and argues against a policy that never existed.
The dissent ignores the record in an apparent attempt to save the School District from itself. Dissenting Op. at 44–45. The School District told the District Court and us on appeal that its policy ties a child’s bathroom designation to their enrollment documents. And the School District repeatedly conceded that its policy would allow a transgender male student to use the boys’ bathroom as long as he provided documents at the time of enrollment that reflected his sex as male. The dissent says, however, that these repeated admissions are of no moment because the School Board also said they would “re-examine” the reliance on the “self-identified” enrollment information if “abiding by [that] data became a problem.”
St. Johns County School Board has to be making a value judgment, based on something, that Drew Adams is a girl, because otherwise they’d let him use the boys’ bathroom, right?”Counsel: “Yeah, and the value judgment comes in the form of the enrollment materials, which is, what are you when you enroll in the school district?”
District Court: “All right. Well, let’s talk about that. … What happens if the person’s already transitioned before they come to your school and so the paperwork says boy? … I think [a School Board witness] said, ‘Well, then we would treat him like a boy until we had reason not to,’ or something like that.”
Counsel: “Yeah. That’s correct.”
District Court: “But I’m not exactly sure what that means. So if the value judgment is made at the time of the enrollment -- and what is it based on? It’s based on --”
Counsel: “The enrollment material.”
R. Doc. 198 at 5, 82–83 (quotation marks omitted).
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