USCA11 Case: 18-13592 Document: 304-1 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 37 of 150
carve-out, then Title IX permits the School Board to mandate that all students follow the policy, including Adams.
1. The Statute Is Not Ambiguous
To interpret “sex” within the meaning of Title IX, we look to the ordinary meaning of the word when it was enacted in 1972. Wis. Cent. Ltd. v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2067, 2070 (2018) (“[O]ur job is to interpret the words consistent with their ‘ordinary meaning … at the time Congress enacted the statute.’” (second alteration in original) (quoting Perrin v. United States, 444 U.S. 37, 42 (1979))). One of the methods of determining the ordinary meaning of a word “is by looking at dictionaries in existence around the time of enactment.” United States v. Chinchilla, 987 F.3d 1303, 1308 (11th Cir. 2021) (quoting EEOC v. Catastrophe Mgmt. Sols., 852 F.3d 1018, 1026 (11th Cir. 2016)). Reputable dictionary definitions of “sex” from the time of Title IX’s enactment show that when Congress prohibited discrimination on the basis of “sex” in education, it meant biological sex, i.e., discrimination between males and females. See, e.g., Sex, American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1976) (“The property or quality by which organisms are classified according to their reproductive functions.”); Sex, American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1979) (same); Sex, Female, Male, Oxford English Dictionary (re-issue ed. 1978) (defining “sex” as “[e]ither of the two divisions of organic beings distinguished as male and female respectively,” “female” as “[b]elonging to the sex which bears offspring,” and “male” as “[o]f or belonging to the sex which begets offspring, or performs the
