USCA11 Case: 18-13592 Document: 304-1 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 105 of 150
office, three adults were waiting for him. One of them, a guidance counselor, told Adams that there had been an anonymous complaint about his using the boys’ bathroom and that he could no longer use it. The guidance counselor instructed Adams to use the gender-neutral bathroom or the girls’ bathrooms.
Adams was humiliated. He could not use the girls’ restrooms. “[J]ust thinking about” doing that caused him a great deal of “anxiety.” Doc. 160-1 at 118. Indeed, the district court found the school’s suggestion that Adams could use the girls’ restrooms “disingenuous.” Doc. 192 at 28 n.30. Adams had “facial hair,” “typical male muscle development,” a flat chest, and had a “voice … deeper than a girl’s.” Id. at 66. He also wore his hair short and dressed in boys’ clothing. Teachers and students at Nease High School treated Adams like any other boy in every other respect. “It would seem that permitting [Adams] to use the girls’ restroom would be unsettling for all the same reasons the School District does not want any other boy in the girls’ restroom,” the district court found. Id. at 28 n.30. In reality, the School District left Adams with only one option: he had to use the gender-neutral restrooms while at school.
Nease is a large school comprising multiple buildings, and some of its gender-neutral bathrooms are “considerably f[a]rther away than the boys’ restrooms,” depending upon where a student’s
