(LifeSiteNews) – The St. Johns County School Board in Florida was within its rights to limit use of school restrooms to actual members of their designated sex, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in a 7-4 vote.
The Christian Post reported that the court ruled in the case of Drew Adams, a female ex-student who “identified” as male and was eventually barred from male restrooms in ninth grade after being allowed to use them for six weeks. The school says it limits restroom access by biological sex for privacy purposes and offers gender-confused students the accommodation of a gender-neutral, single-stall facility. But that didn’t satisfy Adams, who sued the district for alleged discrimination.
“The school board’s bathroom policy is clearly related to — indeed, is almost a mirror of — its objective of protecting the privacy interests of students to use the bathroom away from the opposite sex and to shield their bodies from the opposite sex in the bathroom, which, like a locker room or shower facility, is one of the spaces in a school where such bodily exposure is most likely to occur,” Judge Barbara Lagoa wrote for the majority.
Writing for the dissenters, Judge Jill Pryor claimed that using the single-stall restroom constitutes forcing gender-confused students “to endure a stigmatizing and humiliating walk of shame.”
Conservatives argue that forcing children and teens to share intimate facilities such as bathrooms, showers, or changing areas with members of the opposite sex violates their privacy rights, subjects them to needless emotional stress, and gives potential male predators a viable pretext to enter female bathrooms or lockers by simply claiming transgender status, regardless of whether they are sincerely dysphoric.
The problem is currently on full display in Virginia, where a grand jury returned charges against fired ex-Loudoun County Public Schools superintendent Scott Ziegler for allegedly covering up the rape of a female student by a “transgender” classmate in a girls’ bathroom due to its damaging implications for the LGBT movement.
The St. Johns ruling comes amid a broader push to de-sexualize public schools in the Sunshine State. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who pledged this week to continue “defend[ing] our children against those who seek to rob them of their innocence,” has taken numerous actions to prohibit ideological-proselytization and age-inappropriate sexual discussions from classrooms and help elect like-minded conservatives to local school boards, as well as force compliance with state standards such as keeping restrooms sex-specific.