Trans boy sues school district after being denied bathroom rights
A transgender teenager is suing his high school district in Florida after he was blocked from using a gender-appropriate bathroom.
Drew Adams is suing the Ponte Vedra school district after he was denied the right to use the boys’ restroom.
He was initially allowed to use the bathroom after he transitioned but there was an anonymous complaint after a month.
School officials later forced him to use unisex bathrooms which were so out of the way he missed classes from having to make the trip.
Adams and his mother Erica Kaper had tried to negotiate with school officials but were unable to reach an agreement.
They filed a complaint with the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
Adams and Kasper have now filed a lawsuit against the St Johns County School Board and the school administrators.
They argue that denying him the right to use a boys’ restroom violates Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 which ban sex discrimination for federally-funded schools.
“Forcing me to use a separate restroom … makes it clear to me that the school district sees me as a lesser person,” Adams, now 16, told the Washington Post.
The lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the Middle District of Florida by Lambda Legal.
This is not the first lawsuit to be filed over transgender school bathroom use.
One case which was expected to go to the US Supreme Court was that of Gavin Grimm from Virginia, but the court punted it back to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Another student, Ash Whitaker, sued in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals which found that Title IX and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause protect against gender identity discrimination.
