Good news for schools grappling with
transgender
bathroom issues. In a Dec. 30
7-4 decision
, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that in a case involving a transgender student and the school board of St. Johns County, Florida, separating use of male and female bathrooms in public schools based on students’ biological sex does not violate the Equal Protection Clause or Title IX.
This ruling applauds the common sense way the school board crafted a bathroom policy that would include and protect boys and girls. It should encourage other schools to follow suit.
In 2015, St. Johns County School Board drafted a simple, straightforward
policy
for bathroom use for their students: “Transgender students will be given access to a gender-neutral restroom and will not be required to use the restroom corresponding to their biological sex.” Students are recognized as male and female based on their enrollment paperwork. Drew Adams, who originally enrolled as a female, was still viewed as female despite the student’s gender questions.
In ninth grade, Adams started to use male restrooms, violating the school’s policy. When two students complained, Adams was reminded of the school’s policy and told to use either the single-sex, gender-neutral restroom or the female communal restrooms. Though this policy seems accommodating and fair, Adams sued.
The majority ruling said in part:
“The School Board’s bathroom policy is clearly related to — indeed, is almost a mirror of — its objective of protecting the privacy interests of students to use the bathroom away from the opposite sex and to shield their bodies from the opposite sex in the bathroom, which, like a locker room or shower facility, is one of the spaces in a school where such bodily exposure is most likely to occur.”
Just a few sentences later, the ruling says something most people feel they cannot say out loud, for fear of criticism from the woke mob.
“The policy impacts approximately 0.04 percent of the students within the School District — i.e., sixteen transgender students out of 40,000 total students — in a manner unforeseen when the bathroom policy was implemented. And to accommodate that small percentage, while at the same time taking into account the privacy interests of the other students in the School District, the School Board authorized the use of sex-neutral bathrooms as part of its Best Practices Guidelines for LGBTQ issues….”
The policy is neither overly-accommodating nor ignorant of the plight of the five transgender students, nor does it ignore nor elevate the rights of the remaining 2,445 students. It is wrong to craft bathroom policies that favor the rights of transgender students while ignoring the privacy and safety rights of everyone else for fear of a lawsuit. Single-sex or gender-neutral bathrooms strike a balance. The fact that a court of law finally upholds this, reversing two rulings that didn’t, is a boon for common sense bathroom policies in schools and a judiciary that backs them up.
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Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She is an opinion columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
