USCA11 Case: 18-13592 Document: 304-1 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 34 of 150
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. As discussed above, the School Board provided this accommodation only after undertaking significant education efforts and receiving input from mental health professionals and LGBTQ groups both within and beyond the School District community.
Contrary to the dissent’s claim, the School Board, through the Best Practices Guidelines, did not discriminatorily “single[] out transgender students.” Jill Pryor Dis. Op. at 32. The School Board sought to accommodate transgender students by providing them with an alternative—i.e., sex-neutral bathrooms—and not requiring them to use the bathrooms that match their biological sex—i.e., the bathroom policy Adams challenges. The School Board did not place a special burden on transgender students by allowing them to use sex-neutral bathrooms under the Best Practices Guidelines, which came well after the implementation of the longstanding bathroom policy separating bathrooms by biological sex; rather, the School Board gave transgender students an alternative option in the form of an accommodation. Ultimately, there is no evidence of purposeful discrimination against transgender students by the School Board, and any disparate impact that the bathroom policy has on those students does not violate the Constitution.
