ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — (Note: The video above was originally published June 28, 2021.)
The St. Johns County School Board is continuing to fight a court ruling that transgender youth should be allowed to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity.
The Board filed a petition Wednesday asking the full 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to take up a case about whether a transgender student should have been able to use the boys' bathroom at Nease High School. A three-judge panel from that court previously sided with the plaintiff, a transgender boy who used to attend Nease High School. The School Board's petition asks the matter be heard by the full 12-member court.
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the School Board's appeal of the three-judge panel's ruling, leaving in place two lower courts' rulings that students should be able to use whichever bathroom aligns with their gender identity.
The case has dragged on for years. The initial lawsuit was filed in 2017 by Drew Adams after Nease refused to let him use the boys' bathroom. He won his case in 2018, which was appealed by the school board in 2019.
The 11th Circuit panel ruled in Adams' favor in 2020. But the school board's petition, filed Wednesday, argues the full panel should hear the case.
"This case has always been about whether a definition of sex founded in the real and enduring biological differences between boys and girls substantially advances the important privacy interests of students to use the bathroom free from members of the opposite biological sex. Yet, the Court has not answered that question," the petition states.
The previous lower courts' rulings cite Title IX, a federal law banning sex discrimination in school programs. But the petition filed last week says the three-judge panel's decision last year "ducks the ultimate question of whether the policy classifying students based on biological sex is permissible."
The petition goes on to ask the court to clarify whether "sex" is synonymous with gender identity, or if it should be defined as a students' biological sex.