Federal Appeals Court Upholds Florida Transgender Bathroom Policy
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The Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted on Friday to uphold a Florida school-board policy requiring students to use the bathroom of their biological sex.
In a vote that was perfectly split down party lines, seven Republican justices ruled that the St. Johns County School Board transgender bathroom ban was constitutional, while the remaining four Democratic justices all dissented.
“A policy can lawfully classify on the basis of biological sex without unlawfully discriminating on the basis of transgender status,” the Trump-appointed judge Barbara Lagoa wrote for the majority.
Andrew Adams, a biological woman who identifies as a man, sued Allen D. Neese High School in 2017 for insisting she use gender-neutral or women’s washrooms only. In 2020, an appeals court panel ruled in favor of Adams before it was reviewed by the full appeals court.
Judge Jill Pryor, appointed by Barack Obama, noted in her dissenting opinion that, “The bathroom policy categorically deprives transgender students of a benefit that is categorically provided to all cisgender students—the option to use the restroom matching one’s gender identity.”
The divide between the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and other appeals courts as well such as Virginia’s Fourth Circuit and Chicago’s Seventh Circuit, may signal a renewed willingness for the Supreme Court to hear the case, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Adams’s lawyer, Tara Borelli, noted the discrepancy following the decision calling it “an aberrant ruling that contradicts the rulings of every other circuit to consider the question across the country,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6–3 majority that federal civil-rights protections included discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. However, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump-appointee, asserted that the ruling specifically did not address the bathroom question.
“We do not purport to address bathrooms, locker rooms, or anything else of the kind. The only question before us is whether an employer who fires someone simply for being homosexual or transgender has discharged or otherwise discriminated against that individual ‘because of such individual’s sex,” Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion.
