USCA11 Case: 18-13592 Document: 304-1 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 101 of 150
identity,[1] the taskforce rejected such a policy for St. Johns County. The leader of the taskforce, Sallyanne Smith, explained why at trial:
[W]hen a girl goes into a girls’ restroom, she feels that she has the privacy to change clothes in there, to go to the bathroom, to refresh her makeup. They talk to other girls. It’s kind of like a guy on the golf course; the women talk in the restrooms, you know. And to have someone else in there that may or may not make them feel uncomfortable, I think that’s an issue we have to look at. It’s not just for the transgender child, but it’s for the [cisgender students].
Doc. 161 at 213. Smith testified that the taskforce also was concerned about how a change in the policy might apply to genderfluid students—students “whose gender changes between male and female.” Doc. 192 at 17[2]:
There’s another population of people that we learned [about] at the conference, it’s called gender fluid, and some days they feel they’re a boy and some days they feel they’re a girl. So potentially a boy could come,
- ↑ It is unclear whether the taskforce was aware of the policy at Aberli’s school specifically when it conducted its review. The record supports, however, that the taskforce reviewed BCPS’s policy and other similar policies allowing transgender students to use the restrooms corresponding to their gender identities.
- ↑ The term “gender fluid” likely carries a more nuanced meaning that the district court’s definition, but I am confined to the way in which the term is used in the record.
