Adams v. School Board of St. Johns County, FL Brief of Amici Curiae LDF and Columbia Law School Center for Gender and Sexuality Law in Support of Plaintiff-Appellee

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November 24, 2021
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Adams v. School Board of St. Johns County, FL Brief of Amici Curiae NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., and Columbia Law School Center for Gender and Sexuality Law in Support of Plaintiff-Appellee Drew Adams
Matter
- Adams v. The School Board of St. Johns County, Florida
Case
- Adams v. The School Board of St. Johns County, Florida
U.S. state
- Florida
Collection
- Brief Collection
Taxonomy
Identifier
- ddb74de4-ab9a-ee11-be37-00224827e97b
Cite this item

Brief Collection, LDF Court Filings. Adams v. School Board of St. Johns County, FL Brief of Amici Curiae LDF and Columbia Law School Center for Gender and Sexuality Law in Support of Plaintiff-Appellee, 2021. ddb74de4-ab9a-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/b1ba414b-44e4-4208-ab70-5a1d5be683d7/adams-v-school-board-of-st-johns-county-fl-brief-of-amici-curiae-ldf-and-columbia-law-school-center-for-gender-and-sexuality-law-in-support-of-plaintiff-appellee. Accessed November 26, 2025.

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    No. 18-13592

United States Court of Appeals for the 
Eleventh Circuit

DREW ADAMS,
Plaintiff-Appellee,

- v -

THE SCHOOL BOARD OF ST. JOHNS COUNTY, FLORIDA,
Defendant-Appellant.

On Appeal from the Middle District of Florida, Jacksonville Division 
Case No. 3:17-cv-00739-TJC-JBT

BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & 
EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC., AND COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL CENTER 

FOR GENDER & SEXUALITY LAW IN SUPPORT OF 
PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE DREW ADAMS

Sherrilyn A. Ifill 
President and Director-Counsel 

Janai S. Nelson 
Samuel Spital 
Alexsis M. Johnson 
NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & 

EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. 
40 Rector Street, 5th Floor 
New York, NY 10006 
(212) 965-2200 
amjohnson@naacpldf.org

November 24, 2021

Jin Hee Lee 
Mahogane D. Reed*
NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & 

EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC.
700 14th Street NW, Ste. 600 
Washington, DC 20005 
(202) 682-1300 
mreed@naacpldf.org 
* Counsel o f Record

Counsel for  Amicus Curiae NAACP Legal 
Defense & Educational Fund, Inc.

Additional counsel listed on inside cover

mailto:amjohnson@naacpldf.org
mailto:mreed@naacpldf.org


Katherine Franke 
Director

Candace Bond-Theriault
Director o f Racial Justice Policy & Strategy 

COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL CENTER FOR 
GENDER & SEXUALITY LAW 

435 W. 116th Street 
New York, NY 10027 
(212) 854-0061
katherine.franke@law.colmnbia.edu
cb3744@columbia.edu

Counsel for Amicus Curiae 
Columbia Law School Center for 
Gender & Sexuality Law

mailto:katherine.franke@law.colmnbia.edu
mailto:cb3744@columbia.edu


AMICI CURIAE’S CERTIFICATE OF INTERESTED PERSONS AND 
CORPORATE DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

Under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 26.1 and this Court’s Rule 26.1-

1, undersigned counsel certifies that the following list of interested peisons and the

corporate disclosure statement is true and correct:

1. 9to5 -  Amicus Curiae

2. AAPL -  Amicus Curiae

3. AAUW -  Amicus Curiae

4. A Better Balance -  Amicus Curiae

5. Aberli, Thomas A. -  Amicus Curiae

6. Achievement First Public Charter Schools — Amicus Curiae

7. Adams, Drew -  Appellee

8. Adams, Scott -  Appellee’s Father

9. Adecco Group AG -  Parent company for Amicus Curiae General Assembly 

Space, Inc.

10. Adecco, Inc. -  Parent company for Amicus Curiae General Assembly Space, 

Inc.

11. ADL -  Amicus Curiae

12. Advocates for Youth -  Amicus Curiae

13. Athlete Ally -  Amicus Curiae

C-l of 24



14. Airbnb, Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

15. Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP -  Counsel for Amici Curiae

16. Alger, Maureen P. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

17. Allen, Tommy -  Former Board Member of Appellant

18. Alliance Defending Freedom -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

19. Alphabet, Inc. (GOOG) -  Parent company for Amicus Curiae Google LLC

20. Altman, Jennifer G. -  Counsel for Appellee

21. Amend, Andrew -Counsel for Amicus Curiae

22. American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) -  Amicus 

Curiae

23. American Academy of Nursing -  Amicus Curiae

24. American Academy of Pediatrics -  Amicus Curiae

25. American Association of University Women (AAUW) -  Amicus Curiae

26. American Civil Liberties Union -  Amicus Curiae

27. American Civil Liberties Union of Florida — Amicus Curiae

28. American College of Physicians — Amicus Curiae

29. American Medical Association -  Amicus Curiae

30. American Medical Women’s Association -  Amicus Curiae

31. American Nurses Association — Amicus Curiae

32. American School Counselor Association -  Amicus Curiae

C-2 of 24



33. Anastasio, Morgan L. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

34. Anten, Todd -  Counsel for Amici Curiae

35. Apple Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

36. Asana, Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

37. Association of Medical School Pediatric Department Chairs -  Amicus Curiae

38. Atlanta Women for Equality -  Amicus Curiae

39. Autistic Self Advocacy Network -  Amicus Curiae

40. Baker & Hostetler LLP -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

41. Banks, Emily -  Amicus Curiae

42. Barden, Robert Chris -  Counsel for Appellant, Terminated

43. Barrera, Kelly -  Board Member of Appellant

44. Barth, Morgan -  Amicus Curiae

45. Baxter, Rosanne C. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

46. Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom (BALIF) -  Amicus Curiae

47. Bazer, Morgan -  Amicus Curiae

48. BCC -  Amicus Curiae

49. Berlow, Clifford W. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae, Terminated

50. Bertschi, Craig E. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

51. Beth Chayim Chadashim (BCC) -  Amicus Curiae

52. Binning, Sarah R. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

C-3 of 24



53. Bimbaum Women’s Leadership Network at NYU School of Law -  Amicus 

Curiae

54. BlackRock, Inc. (BLK) -  Beneficial owner of Amicus Curiae Yelp Inc.

55. Block, Joshua A. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

56. Boies, Schiller & Flexner, LLP -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

57. Bond-Theriault, Candace -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

58. Borelli, Tara L. -  Counsel for Appellee

59. Boston Area Rape Crisis Center -  Amicus Curiae

60. Bourgeois, Roger -  Amicus Curiae

61. Brown, Meredith Taylor -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae, Terminated

62. Bruce, Diana K. -  Amicus Curiae

63. Buckeye Region Anti-Violence Organization, a Program of Equitas Health -  

Amicus Curiae

64. Bursch, John -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

65. California -  Amicus Curiae

66. California Women Lawyers -  Amicus Curiae

67. California Women’s Law Center -  Amicus Curiae

68. Campbell, James A. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae, Terminated

69. Canan, Patrick -  Board Member of Appellant

70. Carney, Karen -  Amicus Curiae

C-4 of 24



71. Carpenter, Christopher S., Ph.D. -  Amicus Curiae

72. Carter, Heidi -  Amicus Curiae

73. Casa de Esperanza: National Latina Network for Healthy Families and 

Communities -  Amicus Curiae

74. Castillo, Paul David -  Counsel for Appellee

75. Center for Constitutional Rights -  Amicus Curiae

76. Center for Religious Expression -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

77. Center for Reproductive Rights -  Amicus Curiae

78. Central Conference of American Rabbis -  Amicus Curiae

79. Champion Women -  Amicus Curiae

80. Chandy, Sunu P. -  Counsel for Amici Curiae

81. Chang, Tommy -  Amicus Curiae

82. Chapman, Peyton -  Amicus Curiae

83. Chaudhry, Neena -  Counsel for Amici Curiae

84. Chicago Foundation for Women -  Amicus Curiae

85. Coalition of Black Trade Unionists -  Amicus Curiae

86. Coleman Sr., Anthony E. -  Board Member of Appellant

87. Coleman, Arthur - Counsel for Amicus Curiae

88. Collective Power for Reproductive Justice — Amicus Curiae

89. Colorado Consumer Health Initiative -  Amicus Curiae

C-5 of 24



90. Colter, Howard -  Amicus Curiae

91. Columbia Law School Center for Gender and Sexuality Law -  Amicus Curiae

92. Connecticut -  Amicus Curiae

93. Conron, Kerith J., M.P.H., Sc.D. -  Amicus Curiae

94. Constitutional Accountability Center -  Amicus Curiae

95. Cooley LLP -  Counsel for Amici Curiae

96. Copsey, Alan D. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

97. Corrigan, Hon, Timothy J. -  United States District Judge

98. Credo Mobile, Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

99. Cyra, Sherri -  Amicus Curiae

100. Dasgupta, Anisha S. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

101. Davis, Bryan -  Amicus Curiae

102. Davis, Steven D. -  Counsel for Amici Curiae

103. Day One -  Amicus Curiae

104. DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence -  Amicus Curiae

105. Delaware -  Amicus Curiae

106. DeSelm, Lizbeth -  Amicus Curiae

107. Deutsche Bank AG. -  Amicus Curiae

108. DiBenedetto, Arthur -  Amicus Curiae

109. Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) -  Amicus Curiae

C-6 of 24



110. District of Columbia -  Amicus Curiae

111. Doolittle, Kirsten L. -  Counsel for Appellee

112. Doran, Mary -  Amicus Curiae

113. Doss, Eric -  Amicus Curiae

114. DREDF -  Amicus Curiae

115. Dyer, Karen Caudill -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

116. Dwyer, John C. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

117. Eaton, Mary -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

118. eBay Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

119. Education Counsel, LLC - Counsel for Amicus Curiae

120. Education Law Center PA -  Amicus Curiae

121. Empire Justice Center -  Amicus Curiae

122. Endocrine Society -  Amicus Curiae

123. Eppink Samuel T., Ph.D. (expected 2019) -  Amicus Curiae

124. Equal Rights Advocates -  Amicus Curiae

125. Equality California -  Amicus Curiae

126. Ewing, Gregory -  Amicus Curiae

127. Family Equality -  Amicus Curiae

128. Family Values @ Work -  Amicus Curiae

129. Feminist Women’s Health Center -  Amicus Curiae

C-7 of 24



130. Ferguson, Laura N. -  Counsel for Amici Curiae

131. Ferguson, Robert W. -Counsel for Amici Curiae

132. Florida School Boards Insurance Trust -  Insurance Carrier for Appellant

133. Flores, Andrew R., Ph.D. -  Amicus Curiae

134. Flynn, Diana K. -  Counsel for Appellee

135. FORGE, Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

136. Forson, James (Tim) -  Superintendent of the St. Johns County School 

District

137. Fountain, Lisa Barclay -  Counsel for Appellant

138. Franke, Katherine -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

139. Gartrell, Nanette, M.D. -  Amicus Curiae

140. Gates, Gary J,, Ph.D. -  Amicus Curiae

141. Gender Based Violence Organizations -  Amicus Curiae

142. Gender Diversity -  Amicus Curiae

143. Gender Justice -  Amicus Curiae

144. Gender Spectrum -  Amicus Curiae

145. General Assembly Space, Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

146. Generales, Markos C. -Counsel for Amicus Curiae

147. Girls for Gender Equity -  Amicus Curiae

148. Girls, Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

C-8 of 24



149. GitHub, Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

150. Glassdoor, Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

151. GlaxoSmithKline LLC -  Amicus Curiae

152. GlaxoSmithKline PLC -  Parent company for Amicus Curiae 

GlaxoSmithKline LLC

153. GLMA -  Health Professionals Advancing LGBT Equality -  Amicus Curiae

154. GLSEN -  Amicus Curiae

155. Goldberg, Suzanne -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

156. Gonzales, Gilbert, Ph.D., M.H.A. -  Amicus Curiae

157. Gonzalez-Pagan, Omar -  Counsel for Appellee

158. Google LLC -  Amicus Curiae

159. Gorod, Brianne -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

160. Goss Graves, Fatima -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

161. Greer, Eldridge -  Amicus Curiae

162. Grossman, Miriam -  Amicus Curiae

163. Grijalva, Adelita -  Amicus Curiae

164. Gurtner, Jill -  Amicus Curiae

165. Haney, Matthew -  Amicus Curiae

166. Hargis, Kellie M. -  Amicus Curiae

167. Harmon, Terry J. -  Counsel for Appellant

C-9 of 24



168. Harrington, Emily -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

169. Hawaii -  Amicus Curiae

170. Haynes, Patricia -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

171. Healthy Teen Network -  Amicus Curiae

172. Herman, Jody L., Ph.D. -  Amicus Curiae

173. Heyer, Walt-Amicus Curiae

174. Hohs, Sherie -  Amicus Curiae

175. Holland & Knight, LLP -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

176. Holloway, Ian W., Ph.D., M.S.W., M.P.H. -  Amicus Curiae

177. Hughes, Paul W. (Mayer Brown) -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

178. Human Rights Campaign -  Amicus Curiae

179. IBM Corporation -  Amicus Curiae

180. Iflll, Sherrilyn A. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

181. Illinois -  Amicus Curiae

182. Illinois Accountability Initiative -  Amicus Curiae

183. In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda 

-  Amicus Curiae

184. Indiegogo, Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

185. International Action Network for Gender Equity & Law (IANGEL) -  

Amicus Curiae

C-10 of 24



186. Iowa -  Amicus Curiae

187. Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault -  Amicus Curiae

188. Jacksonville Area Sexual Minority Youth Network, Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

189. Jacobs, Edward J. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

190. James, Letitia -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

191. Johnson, Alexsis M. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

192. Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. (“Kaiser Permanente”) -  Amicus 

Curiae

193. Kaiser Permanente -  Amicus Curiae

194. Kaplan, Aryeh L. -  Counsel for Appellee

195. Kasper, Erica Adams -  Appellee’s Next Friend and Mother

196. Kellum, Nathan W. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

197. Kenney, Tim -  Amicus Curiae

198. Kilaru, Rakesh N. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

199. Kimberly, Michael B. (Mayer Brown LLP) -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

200. Kirkland, Earl -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

201. Knotel, Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

202. Kogan, Terry S. -  Amicus Curiae

203. Kostelnik, Kevin C. -  Counsel for Appellant, Terminated

204. Kunin, Ken -  Amicus Curiae

C -ll of 24



205. Kunze, Lisa -  Principal of Allen D. Nease High School

206. Laidlaw, Michael -  Amicus Curiae

207. Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. -  Counsel for Appellee

208. Lapointe, Markenzy -  Counsel for Appellee

209. Las Cruces Public Schools -  Amicus Curiae

210. Latino Justice PRLDEF -  Amicus Curiae

211. Lawyers Club of San Diego -  Amicus Curiae

212. League of Women Voters -  Amicus Curiae

213. Lee, Jin Hee -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

214. Legal Aid At Work -  Amicus Curiae

215. Legal Momentum -  Amicus Curiae

216. Legal Voice -  Amicus Curiae

217. Levi Strauss & Co. -  Amicus Curiae

218. Linden Research, Inc. d/b/a Linden Lab -  Amicus Curiae

219. Los Angeles Unified School District -  Amicus Curiae

220. Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault -  Amicus Curiae

221. Louisiana NOW -  Amicus Curiae

222. Love, Laura H. -  Amicus Curiae

223. Lyft, Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

224. MacKenzie, Dominic C. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

C-12 of 24



225. Maine -  Amicus Curiae

226. Maine Women’s Lobby -  Amicus Curiae

227. Majeski, Jeremy -  Amicus Curiae

228. Mallory, Christy, J.D. -  Amicus Curiae

229. Mapbox, Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

230. Marin Software Incorporated (MRIN) -  Amicus Curiae

231. Martin, Emily -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

232. Massachusetts -  Amicus Curiae

233. Mayer Brown LLP -  Counsel for Amici Curiae

234. McCaleb, Gary S. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

235. McCalla, Craig -  Amicus Curiae

236. McRae Bertschi & Cole, LLC -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

237. Meece, Gregory R. -  Amicus Curiae

238. Meerkamper, Shawn -  Amicus Curiae

239. Melody, Colleen M. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

240. Mesa, David D. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

241. Meyer, Ilan, H., Ph.D. -  Amicus Curiae

242. Michigan -  Amicus Curiae

243. Michigan Coalition to End Domestic & Sexual Violence -  Amicus Curiae

C-13 of 24



244. Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) -  Amicus Curiae and parent company for 

Amicus Curiae GitHub, Inc.

245. Mignon, Bill -  Board Member of Appellant

246. Miller, William C. -  Counsel for Appellee

247. Minnesota -  Amicus Curiae

248. Minter, Shannon -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

249. Morse, James C., Sr. -  Amicus Curiae

250. Mott-Smith, Audrey -  Counsel for Amici Curiae

251. Munson, Ziad W. -  Amicus Curiae

252. Murray, Kerrel -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

253. NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

254. NARAL Pro-Choice America -  Amicus Curiae

255. Nardecchia, Natalie -  Counsel for Appellee, Terminated

256. National Alliance to End Sexual Violence -  Amicus Curiae

257. National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum -  Amicus Curiae

258. National Association of School Psychologists -  Amicus Curiae

259. National Association of Social Workers -  Amicus Curiae

260. National Association of Women Lawyers -  Amicus Curiae

261. National Black Justice Coalition -  Amicus Curiae

262. National Center for Law and Economic Justice -  Amicus Curiae

C-14 of 24



263. National Center for Transgender Equality -  Amicus Curiae

264. National Coalition Against Domestic Violence -  Amicus Curiae

265. National Council of Jewish Women -  Amicus Curiae

266. National Council on Independent Living -  Amicus Curiae

267. National Crittenton -  Amicus Curiae

268. National LGBTQ Task Force -  Amicus Curiae

269. National Organization for Women Foundation -  Amicus Curiae

270. National PTA and The American School Counselor Association -  Amicus 

Curiae

271. National Resource Center on Domestic Violence — Amicus Curiae

272. National Women’s Law Center -  Amicus Curiae

273. National Women’s Political Caucus -  Amicus Curiae

274. Neal, Blake A. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

275. Nebraska Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence -  Amicus Curiae

276. Nelson, Janai S. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

277. Nevada Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence -  Amicus Curiae

278. New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence -  Amicus 

Curiae

279. New Jersey — Amicus Curiae

280. New Mexico -  Amicus Curiae

C-15 of 24



281. New Mexico Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs, Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

282. New York -  Amicus Curiae

283. New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault -  Amicus Curiae

284. NIO Inc. (NIO) -  Parent company for Amicus Curiae NIO USA, Inc.

285. NIO NextEV Ltd. -  Parent company for Amicus Curiae NIO USA, Inc.

286. NIO USA, Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

287. Northern Marianas Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence -  

Amicus Curiae

288. Oasis Legal Services -  Amicus Curiae

289. Oath Inc. -  Parent company for Amicus Curiae Tumblr, Inc.

290. O’Melveny & Myers LLP -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

291. O’Reilly, John -  Amicus Curiae

292. OGC Law, LLC. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

293. Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence -  Amicus Curiae

294. Oklahoma Call for Reproductive Justice -  Amicus Curiae

295. Oregon -  Amicus Curiae

296. Oregon Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence -  Amicus Curiae

297. Orr, Asaf-  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

298. Our Bodies Ourselves Today -  Amicus Curiae

299. Palacios, Patricia -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

C-16 of 24



300. Palazzo, Denise -  Amicus Curiae

301. Parent-Child Center -  Amicus Curiae

302. Patreon, Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

303. Pediatric Endocrine Society -  Amicus Curiae

304. Pennsylvania -  Amicus Curiae

305. PFLAG, Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

306. Pierce, Jerome -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

307. Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP -  Counsel for Appellee

308. Pincus, Andrew J. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

309. Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida -  Amicus Curiae

310. Planned Parenthood of South Florida and the Treasure Coast, Inc.

311. Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida -  Amicus Curiae

312. Pollock, Lindsey -  Amicus Curiae

313. Portnoi, Dimitri -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

314. Postmates Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

315. Powell, Wesley R. -  Counsel for Record of Amicus Curiae

316. Purcell, Noah G. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

317. Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP -  Counsel for Amici Curiae

318. Rakuten, Inc. -  Beneficial owner of Amicus Curiae Lyft, Inc.

319. Ranck-Buhr, Wendy -  Amicus Curiae

C-17 of24



320. Rao, Devi M. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae, Terminated

321. Rape/Domestic Abuse Program -  Amicus Curiae

322. RC Barden and Associates -  Counsel for Appellant, Terminated

323. Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd. (TYO 6098) -  Parent company for Amicus 

Curiae Glassdoor Inc.

324. Reed, Mahogane D. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

325. Replacements, Ltd. -  Amicus Curiae

326. Reproaction -  Amicus Curiae

327. Retzlaff, Pamela -  Amicus Curiae

328. Reynolds, Andrew, Ph.D. -  Amicus Curiae

329. RGF OHR USA, Inc. -  Parent company for Amicus Curiae Glassdoor Inc.

330. Rhode Island -  Amicus Curiae

331. Rivaux, Shani -  Counsel for Appellee

332. Robertson, Cynthia C. -  Counsel for Appellee

333. Rose, Nicholas M. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

334. Rothfield, Charles -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

335. Samuels, Jocelyn, J.D. -  Amicus Curiae

336. San Diego Cooperative Charter Schools -  Amicus Curiae

337. Santa, Rachel -  Amicus Curiae

338. SAS A Crisis Center -  Amicus Curiae

C-18 of 24



339. Sears, R. Bradley, J.D. -  Amicus Curiae

340. Schaffer, Brian -  Amicus Curiae

341. Scholars Who Study The Transgender Population -  Amicus Curiae

342. Schommer, Monica -  Amicus Curiae

343. School Administrators from 29 States and the District of Columbia 

Amicus Curiae

344. School District of South Orange and Maplewood -  Amicus Curiae

345. Segal, Richard M. -  Counsel for Appellee

346. Sethi, Chanakya A. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

347. Shaffer, Chelsea P. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

348. Shah, Pam -  Amicus Curiae

349. Shirk, Sarah -  Amicus Curiae

350. Shutterstock, Inc. (SSTK) -  Amicus Curiae

351. SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change -  Amicus Curiae

352. SisterReach -  Amicus Curiae

353. Slanker, Jeffrey D. -  Counsel for Appellant

354. Slavin, Alexander -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

355. Slough, Beverly -  Board Member of Appellant

356. Smith, Nathaniel R. -  Counsel for Appellee

357. Sniffen, Robert J. -  Counsel for Appellant

C-19 of 24



358. Sniffen & Spellman, P.A. -  Counsel for Appellant

359. Southern Poverty Law Center -  Amicus Curiae

360. Spellman, Michael P. -  Counsel for Appellant

361. Spital, Samuel -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

362. Spotify AB -  Parent company for Amicus Curiae Spotify USA Inc.

363. Spotify Technology S.A. -  Parent company for Amicus Curiae Spotify USA 

Inc.

364. Spotify USA Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

365. Spryszak, Delois Cooke -  Amicus Curiae

366. SSAIS.org -  Amicus Curiae

367. Steptoe & Johnson LLP -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

368. Stop Sexual Assault in Schools (SSAIS.org) -  Amicus Curiae

369. Stork, Victoria Lynn -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

370. SurvJustice -  Amicus Curiae

371. Sutherland, Emily -  Amicus Curiae

372. Taymore, Cyndy-Amicus Curiae

373. Teufel, Gregory H. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

374. Tilley, Daniel -  Counsel for Amici Curiae

375. The American Academy of Pediatrics -  Amicus Curiae

376. The Impact Fund -  Amicus Curiae

C-20 of 24



377. The Law Office of Kirsten Doolittle, P.A. -  Counsel for Appellee

378. The School Board of St. Johns County, Florida -  Appellant

379. The Southwest Women’s Law Center -  Amicus Curiae

380. The Women’s Law Center of Maryland -  Amicus Curiae

381. Toomey, Joel -  Magistrate Judge

382. Trans Youth Equality Foundation -  Amicus Curiae

383. Tumblr, Inc. -  Amicus Curiae

384. Twitter Inc. (TWTR) -  Amicus Curiae

385. Tyler & Bursch, LLP. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

386. Tyler, Robert H. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

387. Tysse, James E. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

388. Underwood, Barbara D. -  Counsel for Amici Curiae

389. Union for Reform Judaism — Amicus Curiae

390. UniteWomen.org -  Amicus Curiae

391. Upchurch, Bailey & Upchurch, P.A. -  General Counsel to Appellant

392. Upchurch, Frank D. -  General Counsel to Appellant

393. Valbrun-Pope, Michaelle -  Amicus Curiae

394. Van Meter, Quentin -  Amicus Curiae

395. Van Mol, Andre -  Amicus Curiae

396. Vannasdall, David-Amicus Curiae

C-21 of 24



397. Vaughn, Craig -  Amicus Curiae

398. Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) -  Parent company for Amicus Curiae 

Tumblr, Inc.

399. Vermont -  Amicus Curiae

400. Vermont Network Against Domestic & Sexual Violence -  Amicus Curiae

401. Virginia -  Amicus Curiae

402. Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance -  Amicus Curiae

403. Vitale, Julie -  Amicus Curiae

404. Voices of Hope -  Amicus Curiae

405. Wallace, Matthew M. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae, Terminated

406. Washington -  Amicus Curiae

407. Washoe County School District-Amicus Curiae

408. Wasick, Joanna -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

409. Weber, Thomas -  Amicus Curiae

410. Weisel, Jessica M. -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

411. Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law -  Amicus Curiae

412. Wilkinson Stekloff LLP -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

413. Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

414. Wilson, Bianca, D.M., Ph.D. -  Amicus Curiae

415. Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault -  Amicus Curiae

C-22 of 24



416. Women of Reform Judaism, and Men of Reform Judaism -  Amicus Curiae

417. Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia -  Amicus Curiae

418. Women’s Bar Association of the State of New York -  Amicus Curiae

419. Women’s Center for Advancement -  Amicus Curiae

420. Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press -  Amicus Curiae

421. Women’s Law Project -  Amicus Curiae

422. Women’s Law Project and Young Women United -  Amicus Curiae

423. Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles -  Amicus Curiae

424. Women Lawyers On Guard Inc. (“WLG”) -  Amicus Curiae

425. Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund -  Amicus Curiae

426. Women’s Liberation Front -  Amicus Curiae

427. Wong, Kyle -  Counsel for Amicus Curiae

428. Working Assets, Inc. -  Parent company for Amicus Curiae CREDO Mobile, 

Inc.

429. WV Free -  Amicus Curiae

430. Wyoming Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault -  

Amicus Curiae

431. Xerox Corporation (XRX) -  Amicus Curiae

432. Yelp Inc. (YELP) -  Amicus Curiae

433. Young Women United -  Amicus Curiae

C-23 of 24



LDF is a non-profit, non-partisan corporation. Amici have no parent 

corporations, and no publicly held corporations have any form of ownership interest 

in amici.

/s/ Mahozane D. Reed 
Mahogane D. Reed 
NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & 

EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. 
700 14th St. NW, Ste. 600 
Washington, DC 20005 
(212) 965-2200 
mreed@naacpldf.org

C-24 of 24

mailto:mreed@naacpldf.org


TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

AMICI CURIAE’S CERTIFICATE OF INTERESTED PERSONS AND 
CORPORATE DISCLOSURE STATEMENT................................................... ..C-l

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES.....................................................................................iii

INTERESTS OF AMICI CURIAE............................................................................. 1

STATEMENT OF THE ISSUES.......................... .................................................... 3

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT.................................................................................. 4

ARGUMENT.............................................................................................................. 6

I. Our Nation’s History Makes Clear that the Physical Separation of
Bathrooms Is Harmful and Stigmatizing..........................................................7

II. The School Board’s Justification for Physically Separating
Transgender Children Invokes the Kind of False Stereotypes Once 
Used to Justify Racial Segregation.................     12

A. Bathrooms and the Myth of Contamination........................................ 13

B. Swimming Pools and the Myth of Black Sexual Predation................ 15

C. Anti-miscegenation Laws as a Bar to Interracial Intimacy................. 18

D. Lesbian and Gay Criminalization and Discrimination........... ............ 20

III. The Dubious Characterization of Protecting Some Individuals from
Discomfort Cannot Justify the School Board’s Bathroom-Exclusion 
Rule..........................       22

A. Order and Peace in Public Recreational Facilities......................   23

B. Residential Restrictions Based on Purported Safety Concerns..........25

IV. The School Board’s Bathroom-Exclusion Rule is Anathema to the
Fourteenth Amendment’s Promise of Equal Protection...... .........................27

CONCLUSION..................        29
i



CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE WITH FRAP 32(g)(1)..................................30

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE.................................................................................31

ii



TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

PAGE(S)

CASES

Brown v. Bd. ofEduc.,
347 U.S. 483 (1954)...........................................................................................1, 8

City o f Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr.,
473 U.S. 432 (1985).............................. ........................................ .........18, 26, 28

Dawley v. City o f Norfolk,
260 F.2d 647 (4th Cir. 1958)........................................................................ ........8

DeBoer v. Snyder,
772 F.3d 388 (6th Cir. 2014)................................................................................ 3

Dawson v. Mayor o f Baltimore City,
220 F.2d 386 (4th Cir. 1955), aff’dper curiam, 350 U.S. 877
(1955)............................................................................................................. 23,25

Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada,
305 U.S. 337 (1938).... .......................................... ............................................... 1

Gloucester Cnty. Sch. Bd. v. G. G. ex rel. Grimm,
136 S. Ct. 2442 (2016)...........................................................................................3

Heart o f Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States,
379 U.S. 241 (1964).......................................   9

Holley v. City o f Portsmouth,
150 F. Supp. 6 (E.D. Va. 1957).......................................   24

Horton v. Midwest Geriatric Mgmt., LLC,
963 F.3d 844 (8th Cir. 2020)......... .............................................. ........................ 3

Hunter v. Erickson,
393 U.S. 385 (1969)............................................................................................. 26

King v. City o f Montgomery,
168 So. 2d 30 (Ala. Ct. App. 1964)......

iii

7



Korematsu v. United States,
323 U.S. 214(1944)............................................................................................. 27

Lawrence v. Texas,
539 U.S. 558 (2003)............................................................ ................................21

Lonesome v. Maxwell,
123 F. Supp. 193 (D. Md. 1954), rev’dsub nom. Dawson v. Mayor
o f Baltimore, 220 F.2d 386 (4th Cir. 1955), aff’d, 350 U.S. 877
(1955)..................................      16,25

Loving v. Virginia,
147 S.E.2d 78 (Va. 1966).................................................................................... 19

Loving v. Virginia,
388 U.S. 1 (1967)...............  18-19

Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colo. C.R. Comm ’n,
138 S. Ct. 1719(2018)................................   2-3

McLaurin v. Okla. State Regents for Higher Ednc.,
339 U.S. 637 (1950).........................................   1

Naim v. Naim,
87 S.E.2d 749 (Va. 1955)......... ..........................................................................19

New Orleans City Park Improvement Ass ’n v. Detiege,
252 F.2d 122 (5th Cir.), aff’d per curiam, 358 U.S. 54 (1958)................... 24-25

Newman v. Piggie Park Enters., Inc.,
256 F. Supp. 941 (D.S.C. 1966), aff’d in relevant part and rev’d in
part on other grounds, 377 F.2d 433 (4th Cir. 1967), aff’d and
modified on other grounds, 390 U.S. 400 (1968)........... ..................................... 1

Ohergefell v. Hodges,
135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015)............................ .........................................................2-3

Palmore v. Sidoti,
466 U.S. 429 (1984)............................................................................................22

IV



Perry v. Schwarzenegger,
704 F. Supp. 2d 921 (N.D. Cal. 2010), aff’dPerry v. Brown, 671 
F.3d 1052 (9th Cir. 2012), vacated sub nom. Hollingsworth v.
Perry, 570 U.S. 693 (2013)................................................................................. 21

Phillips v. Martin Marietta Corp.,
400 U.S. 542 (1971)............................................................................................... 1

Regents o f Univ. o f Cal. v. Bakke,
438 U.S. 265 (1978)............................................................................................... 8

Robinson v. Florida,
378 U.S. 153 (1964)........................................................................ ...................... 7

Romer v. Evans,
517 U.S. 620(1996)....... ........................ .................................................. 2, 22,28

Sipuelv. Bd. o f Regents o f Univ. o f Okla.,
332 U.S. 631 (1948).....................   1

Sweatt v. Painter,
339 U.S. 629 (1950)................ ......................................... .................................... 1

Tate v. Dep ’t o f Conservation & Dev.,
133 F. Supp. 53 (E.D. Va. 1955), aff’d, 231 F.2d 615 (4th Cir.
1956), cert, denied, 352 U.S. 838 (1956)................ ..........................................25

Tex. Dep’t o f Hous. & Cmty. Affs. v. Inclusive Cmtys. Project, Inc.,
135 S.Ct. 2507 (2015)........................................................   29

Turner v. Randolph,
195 F. Supp. 677 (W.D. Tenn. 1961).................................. ........................14-15

United States v. Virginia,
518 U.S. 515 (1996)....... ............................ ........................................................ 15

United States v. Windsor,
570 U.S. 744 (2013)............ ............................................................................. 2-3

Watson v. City o f Memphis,
373 U.S. 526 (1963).......................... ................................................................. 24

v



OTHER AUTHORITIES

Adam Fairclough, Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in
Louisiana, 1915-1972 (2008).....     8

Brief of Amici Curiae NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund,
Inc. & NAACP in Suppot of Appellees & Affirmance, Bostic v.
Schaefer, 760 F.3d 352 (4th Cir. 2014) (No. 14-1167) 2014 WL
1510928.................................................................................................................. 2

Brief of Amicus Curiae NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund,
Inc., Ingersoll v. Arlene’s Flowers, 389 P.3d 543 (Wash. 2017)
(No. 91615-2)......................................................................................................... 2

Brief of Petitioner Michael J. Bowers Attorney General of Georgia,
Bowers v. Hardwick,
478 U.S. 186 (1986), 1985 WL 667939 ....................................................   ...20

C.J. Griffin, Note, Workplace Restroom Policies in Light o f New 
Jersey’s Gender Identity Protection, 61 Rutgers L. Rev. 409 
(2009)........................  13-14

Christina Cauterucci, Hidden Figures Is a Powerful Statement Against 
Bathroom Discrimination, Slate (Jan. 18, 2017), 
https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/01 /hidden-figures-is-a- 
powerful-statement-against-bathroom-discrimination.html............................... 10

Dorothy E. Roberts, Loving v. Virginia as a Civil Rights Decision, 59
N.Y.L. Sch. L. Rev. 175 (2015)........................................       ...18

Eileen Boris, “You Wouldn’t Want One o f ‘Em Dancing with Your 
Wife”: Racialized Bodies on the Job in World War II, 50 Am. Q.
77 (1998)..............  .....13

LGBT Youth: Experiences with Violence, U.S. Dep’t of Health &
Human Servs. (Nov. 12, 2014),
https://www.cdc.gov/lgbthealth/youth.htm.........................  28

James W. Fox Jr., Intimations o f Citizenship: Repressions and
Expressions o f Equal Citizenship in the Era o f Jim Crow, 50 How.
L.J. 113 (2006)........................... .................................... .......................... ....12, 17

vi

https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/01
https://www.cdc.gov/lgbthealth/youth.htm


Jeff Wiltse, Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools
in America (2007)............................................................................................... 15

Julian Bond, Under Color o f Law, 47 How. L.J. 125 (2003)............... .................... 9

Neal Katyal, Confession o f Error: The Solicitor General's Mistakes 
During The Japanese-American Internment Cases (May 20, 2011), 
https://www.justice.gov/opa/blog/confession-error-solicitor- 
generals-mistakes-during-japanese-american-internment-cases........................ 27

Nick Haslam, How the Psychology o f Public Bathrooms Explains the 
‘Bathroom Bills, ’ Wash. Post (May 13, 2016), 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/
posteverything/wp/2016/05/13/how-the-psychology-of-public- 
bathrooms-explains-the-bathroom-
bills/?noredirect=on&utmAerm=::.eb 182b0adbdc...............................................13

Transcript of Oral Argument, Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)
(No. 02-102), 2003 WL 1702534...................................     20

Phoebe Godfrey, Bayonets, Brainwashing, and Bathrooms: The 
Discourse o f Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Desegregation o f 
Little Rock’s Central High, 62 Ark. Hist. Q. 42 (2003)....... ............................. 13

Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board o f 
Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality (Knopf 
1975)...................................................     7

Tobias Barrington Wolff, Civil Rights Reform and the Body, 6 Harv.
L. & Pol’y Rev. 201 (2012)..........................     21

Vernon E. Jordan Jr., The Power o f Movies to Change Our Hearts,
N.Y. Times (Feb. 18, 2017),
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/opinion/sunday/fhe-power- 
of-movies-to-change-our-hearts.html.....................................   .....10

vii

https://www.justice.gov/opa/blog/confession-error-solicitor-generals-mistakes-during-japanese-american-internment-cases
https://www.justice.gov/opa/blog/confession-error-solicitor-generals-mistakes-during-japanese-american-internment-cases
https://www.washingtonpost.com/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/opinion/sunday/fhe-power-of-movies-to-change-our-hearts.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/opinion/sunday/fhe-power-of-movies-to-change-our-hearts.html


INTERESTS OF AMICI CURIAE1

The NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. (“LDF”) is the nation’s 

first and foremost civil rights legal organization. Through litigation, advocacy, and 

public education, LDF strives to enforce the United States Constitution’s promise of 

equal protection and due process for all. See, e.g., Brown v. Bd. o f Educ., 347 U.S. 

483 (1954); McLaurin v. Okla. State Regents for Higher Educ., 339 U.S. 637 (1950); 

Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950); Sipuel v. Bd. o f Regents ofUniv. o f Okla., 

332 U.S. 631 (1948); Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938).

Pursuant to its mission, LDF has advocated against sex-based discrimination, 

see, e.g., Phillips v. Martin Marietta Corp., 400 U.S. 542 (1971), and public- 

accommodation discrimination, see, e.g., Newman v. Piggie Park Enters., Inc., 256 

F. Supp. 941 (D.S.C. 1966), aff’d in relevant part and rev’d in part on other grounds, 

377 F.2d 433 (4th Cir. 1967), aff’d and modified on other grounds, 390 U.S. 400 

(1968).

Moreover, LDF has participated as amicus curiae in several cases addressing 

the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals.

1 Pursuant to Fed. R. App. P. 29(c)(5), amici curiae state that no party’s 
counsel authored this brief either in whole or in part, and further, that no party or 
party’s counsel, or person or entity other than amici curiae, amici curiae’s members, 
and their counsel, contributed money intended to fund preparing or submitting this 
brief.

1



See, e.g., Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colo. C.R. Comm’n, 138 S. Ct. 1719 (2018); 

Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015); United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 

744 (2013); Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996); Brief of Amicus Curiae NAACP 

Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. in Support of Plaintiff-Appellee, Grimm v. 

Gloucester Cnty. Sch. Bd, 972 F.3d 586 (4th Cir. 2020) (No. 19-1952), 2019 WL 

6341088; Brief of Amici Curiae NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. 

& NAACP in Support of Appellees & Affirmance, Bostic v. Schaefer, 760 F.3d 352 

(4th Cir. 2014) (No. 14-1167) 2014 WL 1510928; Brief of Amicus Curiae NAACP 

Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., Ingersoll v. Arlene’s Flowers, 389 P.3d 

543 (Wash. 2017) (No. 91615-2).

The Center for Gender and Sexuality Law (“CGSL” or the “Center”) at 

Columbia Law School is the first and most prominent law school-based law policy 

center committed to translating legal scholarship into real-world change and training 

the next generation of lawyers and advocates fighting for gender and sexual justice. 

CGSL’s faculty, staff, and team of researchers develop rigorous policy analysis, 

litigation strategy, and thought leadership on cutting-edge issues at the intersection 

of gender, sexual, reproductive, racial justice, and religious liberty. CGSL is the base 

for law and policy centers including the Law, Rights and Religion Project, and the 

Equal Rights Amendment Project. Professor Katherine Franke, the Director of the 

Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, is among the nation’s most prominent

2



scholars on the law of sex, gender, and racial justice. Candace Bond-Theriault, the 

Center for Gender and Sexuality Law’s Director of Racial Justice Policy and 

Strategy, is an attorney who specializes in the intersectional dynamics of racial, 

sexual, and gender-based injustice.

CGSL faculty have filed amicus curiae briefs in numerous cases including 

Horton v. Midwest Geriatric Management, LLC, 963 F,3d 844 (8th Cir. 2020); 

Masterpiece Cakes hop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 138 S. Ct. 1719 

(2018); Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015); Gloucester County School 

Board v. G.G. ex rel. Grimm, 136 S. Ct. 2442 (2016); DeBoer v. Snyder, 772 F.3d 

388 (6th Cir. 2014); and United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (2013).

Given amici’s enduring support of, and interest in, robust and effective anti- 

discrimination laws, amici submit that their experience and knowledge will assist 

the Court in resolving this case.

STATEMENT OF THE ISSUES

Do either the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause or Title IX 

permit barring a transgender student from a restroom according with their gender 

identity on the basis of nonspecific privacy concerns, with no reason to believe 

transgender students are more likely than cisgender students to violate the privacy 

of others?

3



SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

This case is about whether the state may prohibit an individual’s use of public 

spaces on the basis of unjustified—and unjustifiable—fear and prejudice. 

Specifically at issue here is whether the School Board of St. Johns County, Florida 

(the “School Board”) may single out transgender students by prohibiting them from 

using restrooms that are consistent with their gender identity for reasons that are 

unsupported by evidence or sound judgment and that perpetuate false stereotypes. 

The constitutional guarantee of the “equal protection of the laws” demands that the 

answer is no.

LDF’s extensive experience challenging discrimination leads it to register 

three core points in this brief.

First, there is a lengthy and troubling history of state actors restricting access 

to public restrooms and other shared public spaces to demean and subordinate 

disfavored groups. The era of “Colored” and “White” bathrooms remains in the 

living memory of many. The private-space barriers of that de jure segregation—such 

as racially segregated bathrooms—were a source of profound indignity that inflicted 

indelible harms on individuals of all races and society at large. This history warrants 

skepticism of the School Board’s rationale for its actions in this case.

Second, state officials often justified physical separation of Black Americans 

in the public sphere by invoking unfounded fears about sexual contact and predation.

4



Here, too, the School Board’s repeated concerns about “privacy” cannot withstand 

scrutiny. The mere presence of a transgender student in a multi-user bathroom fitting 

their gender identity does not inherently violate the privacy of others in the 

bathroom, any more than the mere presence of cisgender students does. The School 

Board’s argument requires the assumption that transgender students are more likely 

to actively invade the privacy rights of others. That reasoning harks back to the same 

false assumptions used to justify separate bathrooms for racial minorities.

Third, and more broadly, the School Board’s bathroom-exclusion rule fits 

within a troubling tradition of local and state governments and officials justifying 

the physical separation of certain groups from others under the guise of generally 

protecting the non-excluded group—here, cisgender students and staff. These 

rationales conflict with the foundational constitutional principle that government 

actors may not draw unfounded distinctions based on differences, regardless of 

private community biases.

This Court should not repeat the mistakes of the past. The weight of precedent 

and the guarantees of equal protection require affirming the district court and its 

recognition of Drew Adams’s dignity.

5



ARGUMENT

The School Board’s policy of prohibiting transgender students from using 

restrooms that align with their gender identity singles out and physically separates 

those students based on an essential characteristic of their person. Due to the School 

Board’s erroneous and outdated reliance on exclusionary definitions of “biological 

sex,” transgender students alone are forced either to use a restroom that is 

inconsistent with their gender identity or to be relegated to separate, individual 

bathrooms away from other students. The rationale for this disparate treatment bears 

striking similarity to the forced racial separation of restrooms routinely imposed 

throughout the South prior to the Civil Rights Movement, which is now uniformly 

condemned in law and society.

The School Board seeks to justify its policy based on the purported danger to 

other students or the violation of their privacy that would result from sharing 

restrooms with transgender students of a different “biological sex.” See, e.g., 

Appellant Br. at 9 (“[T]he [School Board’s bathroom] policy is of course 

substantially related to the important governmental interest of protecting student 

privacy in bathrooms.”); id. at 9-10 (implying that striking down the School Board’s 

policy would undermine student safety). But like other rules of physical separation 

in this country’s shameful past, the School Board’s invocations of any risk to student 

safety and privacy—other than “risk” based solely in bias and stereotype—lack

6



evidentiary support and legitimacy. There is simply no explanation for the School 

Board’s policy beyond discomfort, fear, and hostility toward transgender students. 

Such sentiments cannot justify any policy, let alone one that stigmatizes children in 

their own schools.

I. Our Nation’s History Makes Clear that the Physical Separation of
Bathrooms Is Harmful and Stigmatizing.

The rationale for the exclusion of transgender students from bathrooms 

matching their gender identity—and the stigma associated with that exclusion—are 

reminiscent of the exclusion of Black Americans from bathrooms designated for 

exclusive use by white people during the Jim Crow era. At that time, “[pjublic 

washrooms and water fountains were rigidly demarcated to prevent contaminating 

contact with the same people who cooked the white South’s meals, cleaned its 

houses, and tended its children.”2 For example, a Florida law required separate 

bathrooms for Black and white people wherever Black people worked or were 

accommodated, Robinson v. Florida, 378 U.S. 153, 156 (1964), and an Alabama 

ordinance required separate bathrooms in workplaces, public accommodations, and 

certain “multiple dwellings,” King v. City o f Montgomery, 168 So. 2d 30, 31 n.2 

(Ala. Ct. App. 1964). State and local governments also segregated bathrooms in

2 Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board o f Education 
and Black America’s Struggle for Equality 107 (Knopf 1975).

7



government buildings by race, despite challenges to these policies. See, e.g., Dawley 

v. City o f Norfolk, 260 F.2d 647, 647 (4th Cir. 1958) (per curiam) (upholding a 

Virginia city’s right to segregate state court bathrooms). The federal government 

even mandated segregation and separate bathrooms in government buildings during 

the early 1900s. Regents o f Univ. o f Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 394 (1978) 

(Marshall, J., separate op.).

In the wake of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board 

o f Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), which prohibited de jure racial segregation in 

public schools, state officials enacted or reinforced laws and policies to ensure the 

racial separation of bathrooms. For example, influenced by the white supremacist 

Citizens Councils, Louisiana legislators passed a series of bills to flout federal 

integration mandates, which included bathroom segregation provisions.3 The Lake 

County, Florida sheriff maintained segregated restrooms at the county jail until the 

United States Department of Justice forced him to take them down.4 And in one 

particularly horrific incident, a white man murdered Samuel Younge, Jr.—a veteran 

and member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—in Tuskegee,

3 Adam Fairclough, Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in 
Louisiana, 1915-1972, at 196, 204-05 (2008).

4 See “Segregation Forever”: Leaders of White Supremacy, Equal Just.
Initiative, https://segregationinamerica.eji.org/report/segregation-forever-
leaders.html (last visited Nov. 19, 2021).

8

https://segregationinamerica.eji.org/report/segregation-forever-


Alabama, for trying to use a segregated bathroom at a gas station.5

State laws requiring racially segregated bathrooms caused immeasurable 

indignity to Black Americans. As the Senate recognized when it passed the Civil 

Rights Act of 1964, “[discrimination is not simply dollars and cents, hamburgers 

and movies; it is the humiliation, frustration, and embarrassment that a person must 

surely feel when he is told that he is unacceptable as a member of the public because 

of his race or color.” Heart o f Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U.S. 241,292 

(1964) (Goldberg, J., concurring) (quoting S. Rep. No. 88-872, at 16 (1964)). Such 

“[ejxposure to embarrassment, humiliation, and the denial of basic respect can and 

does cause psychological and physiological trauma to its victims.” Gen. Bldg. 

Contractors A ss’n v. Pennsylvania, 458 U.S. 375, 413 (1982) (Marshall, J., 

dissenting); cf. Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 755 (1984) (recognizing that “the 

stigmatizing injury often caused by racial discrimination . . .  is one of the most 

serious consequences of discriminatory . . . action”).

Black parents understand the trauma that segregation and racism inflict on 

children all too well. Before the Civil Rights Act was passed, many Black parents 

instructed their children to go to the bathroom at home to avoid segregated public

5 See Julian Bond, Under Color o f Law, 47 How. L.J. 125, 128 (2003).
9



facilities.6 Often, the use of segregated bathrooms required Black people to walk 

long distances—past bathrooms that, by right, they should have been able to use; 

this public humiliation further underscored the separation and shame involved.7

Similar harms flow from the School Board’s policy here. Policies prohibiting 

transgender youth from using the bathrooms that align with their gender identity 

makes transgender youth feel unsafe and puts them at greater risk of bullying, 

harassment, and sexual assault.8 As a result, transgender youth often avoid using 

public bathrooms.9 Rules and policies forcing transgender people to use bathrooms

6 See, e.g., Vernon E. Jordan Jr., The Power o f Movies to Change Our Hearts,
N.Y. Times (Feb. 18, 2017),
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/opinion/sunday/the-power-of-movies-to- 
change-our-hearts.html.

7 See Christina Cauterucci, Hidden Figures Is a Powerful Statement Against 
Bathroom Discrimination, Slate (Jan. 18, 2017), https://slate.com/human- 
interest/2017/01/hidden-figures-is-a-powerful-statement-against-bathroom- 
discrimination.html.

8 Thea A. Schlieben, Sex-Segregated Bathrooms and Suicidal Ideation in 
Transgender Youth, 15 J. Advanced Generalist Soc. Work Prac. 1, 27, 31-32 (2020); 
Ryan Thoreson, Shut Out: Restrictions on Bathroom and Locker Room Access for  
Transgender Youth in U.S. Schools, Hum. Rts. Watch (Sept. 14, 2016), 
https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/09/14/shut-out/restrictions-bathrooni-and-locker~ 
room-access-transgender-youth-us.

9 Shoshana Goldberg & Andrew Reynolds, The North Carolina Bathroom Bill
Could Trigger a Health Crisis Among Transgender Youth, Research Shows, Wash. 
Post (Apr. 18, 2016), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-
cage/wp/2016/04/18/the-north-carolina-bathroom-bill-could-trigger-a-health-crisis- 
among-transgender-youth-research-shows/.

10

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/opinion/sunday/the-power-of-movies-to-change-our-hearts.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/opinion/sunday/the-power-of-movies-to-change-our-hearts.html
https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/01/hidden-figures-is-a-powerful-statement-against-bathroom-discrimination.html
https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/01/hidden-figures-is-a-powerful-statement-against-bathroom-discrimination.html
https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/01/hidden-figures-is-a-powerful-statement-against-bathroom-discrimination.html
https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/09/14/shut-out/restrictions-bathrooni-and-locker~
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-


according to their sex assigned at birth also severely harm their mental health.10 

Excluding transgender students based on sex assigned at birth communicates a clear 

message to transgender youth: “[Y]ou are not welcome here, your safety is not 

paramount, and you may not choose how to identify or express [your] identity.”11 

Such an “emphatic social rejection” at a time when transgender youth are forming 

their identities is not only cruel—it is dangerous, as it lowers transgender students’ 

self-esteem and increases their anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation.12 These 

harms cannot be overstated.

The School Board’s policy places a humiliating and demeaning stigma on 

transgender children by physically separating them from other children who share 

their gender identity. Transgender children cannot change who they are—-nor should 

they be ashamed of who they are or made to feel that they should change.

10 See id; Timothy Wang et ah, State Anti-Transgender Bathroom Bills 
Threaten Transgender People’s Health and Participation in Public Life 7 (2016), 
https://fenwayhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/COM-2485-Transgender- 
Bathroom-Bill-Brief_v8-pages.pdf. For example, a recent study found that 60% of 
transgender youth who were denied access to their bathroom of choice attempted 
suicide. Goldberg & Reynolds, supra note 9. That number decreased to 43% of 
transgender youth who were not denied appropriate bathroom access. Id.

11 Goldberg & Reynolds, supra note 9.
12 Id.; Schlieben, supra note 8, at 31-32; Thoreson, supra note 8.

11

https://fenwayhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/COM-2485-Transgender-Bathroom-Bill-Brief_v8-pages.pdf
https://fenwayhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/COM-2485-Transgender-Bathroom-Bill-Brief_v8-pages.pdf


II. The School Board’s Justification for Physically Separating Transgender 
Children Invokes the Kind of False Stereotypes Once Used to Justify 
Racial Segregation.

The School Board’s justification for its exclusionary bathroom policy—which 

centers on purported concerns about the safety and privacy of cisgender children— 

must be viewed in the context of the baseless past anxieties about sexual predation 

and contagion that were used to justify race-based separation of bathrooms and 

swimming pools, anti-miscegenation laws, and the exclusion and criminalization of 

lesbian and gay individuals. The idea that the mere presence or proximity of a Black 

person could render a space unfit for a white person lay at the core of each of these 

examples of racial segregation and the effect of that segregation was to subordinate 

Black people as inherently inferior.13 That history not only highlights how 

unsupported fears—framed by white Americans as health and safety concerns— 

were often a pretext for discriminatory beliefs and norms based in stereotype, but 

also serves as a lesson that such false reasoning cannot support discriminatory 

treatment like the School Board’s policy towards transgender children.

13 See James W. Fox Jr., Intimations o f Citizenship: Repressions and 
Expressions o f Equal Citizenship in the Era o f Jim Crow, 50 How. L.J. 113, 143 
(2006) (“Public accommodation segregation was the most immediate and frequent 
theater of White supremacy . . . Segregation in these public arenas served as a check 
on and denial of freedom and equality in other spheres.”).

12



A. Bathrooms and the Myth of Contamination

Segregation’s advocates often used false and racist stereotypes about sexual

predation and disease to justify racial segregation of bathrooms. For example, a 1957 

Arkansas newspaper advertisement mused whether white children should “be forced 

to use the same rest room and toilet facilities” as Black Americans given the “high 

venereal disease rate among Negroes .. .”14 Public flyers hawked the “[ujncontested 

medical opinion” that “girls under 14 years of age are highly susceptible to 

[venereal] disease if exposed to the germ through seats, towels, books, gym clothes, 

etc.”15 When President Franklin Roosevelt eliminated racial segregation in certain 

bathrooms, “white female government workers staged a mass protest, fretting that 

they might catch venereal diseases if forced to share toilets with black women.”16 

Supporters of segregation also employed “contamination” rhetoric,17 to argue

14 Phoebe Godfrey, Bayonets, Brainwashing, and Bathrooms: The Discourse 
o f Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Desegregation o f Little Rock’s Central High, 
62 Ark. Hist. Q. 42, 52 (2003).

15 Id. at 63-64.
16 Nick Haslam, How the Psychology o f Public Bathrooms Explains the 

'Bathroom Bills,’ Wash. Post (May 13, 2016), https://www.washingtonpost.com/ 
posteverything/wp/2016/05/13/how-the-psychology-of-public-bathrooms-explains- 
the-bathroom-bills/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.eb 182b0adbdc.

17 See, e.g., C.J. Griffin, Note, Workplace Restroom Policies in Light o f New 
Jersey’s Gender Identity Protection, 61 Rutgers L. Rev. 409, 423-25 (2009) 
(discussing privacy, cleanliness and morality rationales for race-based bathroom 
rules); Eileen Boris, “You Wouldn’t Want One o f ‘Em Dancing with Your Wife 
RacializedBodies on the Job in World War II, 50 Am. Q. 77, 93-97 (1998).

13

https://www.washingtonpost.com/


that “racially segregated bathrooms” were necessary “to make sure that blacks would 

not contaminate bathrooms used by whites.”18 The clear implication of such 

reasoning was that Black people were inherently inferior.19

Those beliefs had no basis in reality. In the landmark case of Turner v. 

Randolph, 195 F. Supp. 677 (W.D. Tenn. 1961), Black Tennesseans, represented by 

a group of attorneys that included Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley, 

challenged the segregation of Memphis public libraries, including their bathrooms. 

Memphis justified its segregated bathrooms with purported evidence “that the 

incidence of venereal disease is much higher among Negroes in Memphis and 

Shelby County than among members of the white race.” Id. at 678-80. In ruling in 

the plaintiffs’ favor, the court found that “no scientific or reliable data have been 

offered to demonstrate that the joint use of toilet facilities . . . would constitute a 

serious danger to the public health, safety or welfare.” Id. at 680.

Here, the School Board’s argument that Drew Adams’ mere presence in a 

boys’ bathroom violates the “privacy rights” of a “biological boy” and poses a risk 

to student “safety and welfare,” Appellant Br. at 7; Appellant Panel Br. at 9, 26, is

18 Griffin, supra note 17 at 423 n.84 (quoting Richard A. Wasserstrom, Racism 
and Sexism, in Race and Racism 319 (Bernard P. Boxill ed., 2001)).

19 See, e.g., id. at 424 (observing that segregation “taught both whites and 
blacks that certain kinds of contacts were forbidden because whites would be 
degraded by the contact with the blacks” (citation omitted)); see also infra Part II.B.

14



also based on false stereotypes and sends an unequivocal message that, as a 

transgender child, Drew is inferior to other children at his school. As in Randolph, 

here, the School Board can offer no evidence, scientific or otherwise, which suggests 

that the presence of transgender students somehow compromises the bodily privacy 

cisgender students can reasonably expect in the bathroom.20 In the absence of any 

such evidence and considering the measures the school already has in place to 

address bathroom misconduct of any kind, it fails to reason that the current policy of 

separating transgender students is necessary to protect student safety and privacy.21 

The School Board’s vague assertions about discomfort or privacy simply cannot 

justify sex-based disparate treatment. See, e.g., United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 

515, 540-46 (1996).

B. Swimming Pools and the Myth of Black Sexual Predation

Supporters of racially segregated swimming pools also invoked baseless

justifications to separate swimmers by race.22 Sexual predation fears were key to this

20 Turner v. Randolph, 195 F. Supp. 677, 680 (W.D. Tenn. 1961). Rather, as 
a three-judge panel of this Court previously concluded, the evidence in the record 
supports a contrary conclusion. See Panel Op. at 20. Appellant identifies a single 
example of an anonymous student complaint about Drew’s use of the boys’ 
bathroom in September 2015. See Appellant Br. at 6. The transcript of the trial 
testimony the School Board cites as evidencing the complaint indicates that Drew’s 
mere presence in the bathroom was the basis for the complaint.

21 Randolph, 195 F. Supp. at 680.
22 See, e.g., Jeff Wiltse, Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming 

Pools in America 2-4, 124 (2007).
15



separation: many white individuals “objected to black men having the opportunity 

to interact with white women at such intimate and erotic public spaces” and “feared 

that black men would act upon their supposedly untamed sexual desire for white 

women by touching them in the water and assaulting them with romantic 

advances.”23

In the mid-1950s, a federal district court drew the parallel directly as it upheld 

Maryland’s racially segregated bathing facilities: “The degree of racial feeling or 

prejudice in this State at this time is probably higher with respect to bathing, 

swimming and dancing than with any other interpersonal relations except direct 

sexual relations'.” Lonesome v. Maxwell, 123 F. Supp. 193,202 (D. Md. 1954), rev ’d 

sub nom. Dawson v. Mayor o f Baltimore, 220 F.2d 386 (4th Cir. 1955), aff’d, 350 

U.S. 877 (1955) (citation omitted). The court acknowledged other recent integration 

efforts but deemed integrated swimming pools a step too far because they “are for 

all ages, and are practically unsupervised, except by young life guards.” Id. at 203. 

The plaintiffs raised an argument not dissimilar from Drew’s argument here: that 

“segregation in recreation introduces a matter of compulsion which impairs its very 

nature.” Id. at 205. The court opined that the “natural thing in Maryland at this time 

. . . is for Negroes to desire and choose to swim with Negroes and whites with

23 M a t 124.
16



whites” and for proprietors to segregate accordingly. Id. at 205.

We now know, however, that the concerns the court legitimized were 

unfounded pretexts marshaled to preserve the racial caste system.24 The true threat 

of interracial social interaction on equal terms—romantic or otherwise—was the 

disruption of an unequal political, social, and economic order. Trumped up fears 

about interracial contact and sexual predation were simply pretextual vehicles to 

render such interaction taboo.

We recognize, of course, that the present context is not identical. But, it calls 

to mind these past frivolous concerns. The School Board’s defense of the policy as 

“merely recognizing] the differing natures of men and women,” Appellant Br. at 9, 

eerily echoes the past mistakes courts made in upholding racial segregation as the 

“natural” social order. The School Board’s policy singles out transgender students 

on the basis of vague concerns about “anatomical and physiological differences” 

between transgender and cisgender students and the implied assumption that the 

mere presence of a transgender student in multi-user bathrooms compels greater 

exposure to intimate anatomy, Appellant Br. at 17—concerns somehow not 

generated by the presence of non-transgender persons in the same bathrooms. 

Without crediting debunked stereotypes that position trans people as deviants and

24 See, e.g., Fox, supra note 13, at 140-43, 155.
17



predators, it is hard to discern any sense to the School Board’s policy beyond 

discomfort or dislike. Yet, the “bare . . .  desire to harm a politically unpopular group” 

is never a “legitimate state interestf].” City o f Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr., 473 

U.S. 432, 446-47 (1985).

C. Anti-miscegenation Laws as a Bar to Interracial Intimacy

Segregationists wielded the same pretextual rationales applied in the contexts

of bathrooms and swimming pools to oppose interracial marriage, which was long 

exploited as the ultimate white fear. Anti-miscegenation rhetoric necessitated the 

maintenance of segregated shared spaces as “legal barriers to interracial intimacy 

were essential to establishing the political order tha t. . . subordinated blacks to the 

rule of whites.”25

The Virginia Supreme Court decision, which the Supreme Court overturned 

in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), drew the bias and fear that underlay 

segregation and the subordination of Black Americans into sharp relief. Virginia 

defended its anti-miscegenation law, the Racial Integrity Act, inter alia, on the 

ground that “intermarriage constitutes a threat to society,” and proffered evidence 

“that the crossing of distinct races is biologically undesirable and should be

25 Dorothy E. Roberts, Loving v. Virginia as a Civil Rights Decision, 59 
N.Y.L. Sch. L. Rev. 175, 179 (2015); see also id. (“Laws banning interracial 
marriage were a key part of the segregationist edifice dismantled by the civil rights 
movement.”).

18



discouraged.” Brief & Appendix on Behalf of Appellee, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 

1 (1967) (No. 395), 1967 WL 113931, at *44, *49.

In sentencing the Lovings for violating the Virginia law, the trial judge 

proclaimed: “The fact that [God] separated the races shows that he did not intend 

for the races to mix.” Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. at 3 (emphasis added). The trial 

court also relied on an earlier decision, Naim v. Naim, which had declared that states 

had a right to “preserve . . . racial integrity” and prevent a “mongrel breed of 

citizens,” “the obliteration of racial pride,” and the “corruption of blood [that would] 

weaken or destroy the quality of its citizenship.” 87 S,E.2d 749, 756 (Va. 1955); 

Loving v. Virginia, 147 S.E.2d 78, 80-82 (Va. 1966).

The United States Supreme Court struck down Virginia’s law because it was 

“designed to maintain White Supremacy.” Loving, 388 U.S. at 11. In so doing, the 

Court rejected Virginia’s post-hoc and pretextual rationalizations for enshrining 

separate categories of marriages, finding “no legitimate overriding purpose 

independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies [the] classification.” 

Id. Loving refused to credit Naim's theories about the social and genetic 

consequences of interracial sexual contact, casting them aside as nothing more than 

“an endorsement of the doctrine of White Supremacy.” Id. at 7.

19



D. Lesbian and Gay Criminalization and Discrimination

Finally, baseless concerns about contagion and sexual predation were

deployed more broadly to justify the criminalization of gay and lesbian individuals 

and their physical exclusion from certain environments regardless of their race.26 in 

Bowers v. Hardwick, for instance, Georgia argued that homosexuality is linked to “a 

disproportionate involvement with adolescents,” “a possible relationship to crimes 

of violence,” and the “transmission o f . . . diseases.” Brief of Petitioner Michael J. 

Bowers Attorney General of Georgia, Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986) 

(No. 85-140), 1985 WL 667939, at *36-37. In Lawrence v. Texas, oral argument 

before the Supreme Court featured discussion of whether “a State could not prefer 

heterosexuals or homosexuals to teach Kindergarten” based on concerns that 

children would be harmed because they “might be induced to . . . follow the path to 

homosexuality.” Transcript of Oral Argument, Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558

26 Because these stigmatizing and harmful claims have been used to 
subordinate and socially exclude individuals on the basis of their race and sexual 
orientation, LGBTQ+ people of color are effectively doubly burdened by such 
baseless justifications. See generally Kimberle Crenshaw, Demarginalizing the 
Intersection o f Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique o f Antidiscrimination 
Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics, 8 Univ. Chi. L.F. 139 (1989) 
(advocating for the application of multidimensional analysis of the way gender, 
class, and race factor into both the substance and effect of discrimination).

20



(2003) (No. 02-102), 2003 WL 1702534, at *20-21.27

The justifications for excluding openly gay and lesbian individuals from both 

military and civil service sounded in contagion rhetoric and fears of sexual 

predation. Proponents of their exclusion expressed the concern that “showering 

bodies would be subjected to unwanted sexual scrutiny.”28 In the 1960s, the chair of 

the Civil Service Commission similarly rejected a request to end a ban on openly 

gay people from federal civil service jobs, pointing to the “apprehension” other 

employees would feel about sexual advances, sexual assault, and related concerns 

regarding “on-the-job use of the common toilet, shower and living facilities.” Perry 

v. Schwarzenegger, 704 F. Supp. 2d 921, 981 (N.D. Cal. 2010), aff’dPerry v. Brown, 

671 F.3d 1052 (9th Cir. 2012), vacated sub nom. Hollingsworth v. Perry, 570 U.S. 

693 (2013) (citation omitted).

As the Supreme Court has made clear, dislike of—or discomfort around—gay 

and lesbian individuals is not a legitimate justification for discrimination. See Romer

27 See also Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558,602 (2003) (Scalia, J., dissenting) 
(“Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct 
as . .. scoutmasters for their children [or] as teachers in their children’s schools[.]”).

28 Tobias Barrington Wolff, Civil Rights Reform and the Body, 6 Harv. L. & 
Pol’y Rev. 201,227 (2012); see also id. (“The [anti-gay military] policy originated 
amidst broad assertions about the disordered quality of same-sex attractions and the 
degeneracy of people who acted upon them, moved through . . .  the alleged duplicity 
and untrustworthiness of gay people, then to the supposed association of gay people 
with disease and lack of cleanliness[.]”).

21



v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 632 (1996). The Equal Protection Clause prohibits the 

government from discriminating against one group to accommodate the prejudices 

or discomfort of another. “The Constitution cannot control such [private] prejudices 

but neither can it tolerate them. Private biases may be outside the reach of the law, 

but the law cannot, directly or indirectly, give them effect.” Palmore v. Sidoti, 466 

U.S. 429, 433 (1984).

All told, the articulated rationales offered for physically separating 

transgender students in this case are analogous in many respects to those that were 

used to justify racially segregated bathrooms and swimming pools or the 

criminalization or exclusion of gay and lesbian individuals. This Court must treat 

the arguments today with similar skepticism.

HI. The Dubious Characterization of Protecting Some Individuals from
Discomfort Cannot Justify the School Board’s Bathroom-Exclusion Rule.

More broadly, the Board’s bathroom-exclusion rule fits within a troubling 

tradition of local and state governments and officials justifying the physical 

separation of certain groups from others under the guise of protecting the non- 

excluded group, here, cisgender students and staff.29 But protecting students from

29 The School Board concedes that both privacy and safety concerns have 
animated its position on the bathroom policy, see Appellant Br. at 5 (“Concerns of 
School Board personnel specifically related to bathroom use included privacy and

22



purported discomfort is a legally insufficient justification for the School Board’s 

bathroom-exclusion rule. Indeed, in the context of racial discrimination, courts and 

society at large have repudiated the proposition that non-credible and speculative 

concerns justify unlawful discrimination, segregation, and exclusion. This is true 

regarding recreational facilities and housing.

A. Order and Peace in Public Recreational Facilities

Under Jim Crow, local and state governments imposed group-based

restrictions on the use of recreational facilities—like public parks, golf courses, 

swimming pools, and baseball and football fields, among others—purportedly to 

avoid discomfort or to protect the public. See, e.g., supra Section II.

For example, following Brown, the City of Baltimore argued that, Brown 

notwithstanding, it was entitled to segregate by race in public parks “for the 

preservation of order within the parks” and “to avoid any conflict which might arise 

from racial antipathies.” Dawson v. Mayor o f Baltimore City, 220 F.2d 386, 387 (4th 

Cir. 1955) (per curiam), aff’dper curiam, 350 U.S. 877 (1955). The Fourth Circuit 

emphatically rejected Baltimore’s argument, emphasizing that post-Brown,

safety.”), though its position before the en banc Court diminishes the role safety 
concerns played in formulating the policy. And although the School Board has 
framed its concerns for the en banc court as concerning the privacy of all students, 
the School Board previously articulated its concerns much more narrowly to include 
only cisgender students. See D. Ct. Op. at 40.

23



“segregation cannot be justified as a means to preserve the public peace.” Id. Other 

cities’ efforts to perpetuate racial segregation in public parks and recreational 

facilities similarly failed. See, e.g., New Orleans City Park Improvement Ass’n v. 

Detiege, 252 F.2d 122, 123 (5th Cir. 1958), aff’dper curiam, 358 U.S. 54 (1958) 

(the Fifth Circuit rejecting an argument that post-Brown segregation of public golf 

courses and park facilities was permissible as “completely untenable”), Holley v. 

City o f Portsmouth, 150 F. Supp. 6, 7-9 (E.D. Va. 1957) (extending a temporary 

injunction against a city law restricting Black Americans’ use of golf courses to one 

day per week).

Notably, the Supreme Court expressly rejected the City of Memphis’s claim 

that safety required delaying the integration of public parks. Watson v. City’ o f 

Memphis, 373 U.S. 526, 535-36 (1963) (recounting the city’s arguments about 

“promot[ing] the public peace by preventing race conflicts” and that “gradual 

desegregation on a facility-by-facility basis is necessary to prevent interracial 

disturbances, violence, riots, and community confusion and turmoil”). Instead, the 

Court stated that “neither the asserted fears of violence and tumult nor the asserted 

inability to preserve the peace was demonstrated at trial to be anything more than 

personal speculations or vague disquietudes of city officials.” Id. at 536. This is 

especially important in the instant case, where the School Board identified concerns 

about safety of students in a perfunctory manner, Appellant Br. at 5, 7, 9, and offered

24



no factual evidence or analysis whatsoever to support its position.

More broadly, arguments about danger to and discomfort of the public were 

also offered to justify segregation in public swimming facilities, in addition to the 

sexualized fears discussed above, supra Section II.B. Baltimore and Maryland 

argued, for example, that segregation of the parks offered “the greatest good of the 

greatest number” of both Black and white citizens, on the view that most individuals, 

regardless of race, “are more relaxed and feel more at home among members of their 

own race than in a mixed group[.]” Lonesome, 123 F. Supp. at 202; see also id. 

(expressing concern about “racial feeling” that would result from removing the 

physical-separation rules).

No matter how the rationale was couched, courts around the country rejected 

such physical-separation rules. See, e.g., Tate v. Dep ’t o f Conservation & Dev., 133 

F. Supp. 53, 61 (E.D. Va. 1955), aff’d, 231 F.2d 615 (4th Cir. 1956), cert, denied, 

352 U.S. 838 (1956) (rejecting denial of access to state parks based on race even 

when conducted by private actors acting on a lease); Dawson, 220 F.2d 386; New 

Orleans City Park Improvement A ss’n, 252 F.2d 122.

B, Residential Restrictions Based on Purported Safety Concerns

The now-condemned physical separation of homes and neighborhoods based

on discomfort with a particular group of people involves the same underlying 

concerns of allowing fears and bias to justify discrimination, thus presenting

25



troubling historical parallels.

For example, in City o f Cleburne, Texas refused to authorize a group home 

for people with intellectual disabilities under its zoning regulations on the grounds 

that it “feared that the students [from a nearby school] might harass the occupants of 

the [] home.” 473 U.S. at 449. The City Council also noted concerns about the 

home’s location on an old flood plain and “expressed worry about fire hazards, the 

serenity of the neighborhood, and the avoidance of danger to other residents[.]” Id. 

at 449-50.

The Supreme Court, however, concluded that the safety concerns were 

unfounded and that these legitimate-sounding rationales were proxies for “mere 

negative attitudes, or fear, unsubstantiated by factors which are properly cognizable 

in a zoning proceeding[.]” Id. at 448. See also id. at 449 (describing the permit denial 

as “based on . . . vague, undifferentiated fears”); Hunter v. Erickson, 393 U.S. 385, 

392 (1969) (rejecting the city’s argument that an amendment to the city charter 

allowing discrimination in home sales should survive challenge because it involved 

“the delicate area of race relations”).

The now discredited decision in Korematsu v. United States provides yet 

another illustration of neutral-sounding rationales offered to justify a physical- 

separation rule that rested on distrust of a subgroup of Americans. In Korematsu, the 

government invoked the “twin dangers of espionage and sabotage” to support the

26



forced removal of Japanese Americans from their residences and into internment 

camps. 323 U.S. 214, 217 (1944). Because those fears were baseless, Mr. 

Korematsu’s conviction was ultimately vacated, and he received reparations from 

Congress, an official apology from the President, and an extraordinary confession of 

error from the United States.30

IV. The School Board’s Bathroom-Exclusion Rule Is Anathema to the 
Fourteenth Amendment’s Promise of Equal Protection.

Precedent makes clear that the government may not physically separate and 

ban individuals from communal spaces on the basis of irrelevant, unjustified beliefs. 

That is particularly true when the ostensible justifications rest upon concerns about 

discomfort and fear that have no factual support. As the historical record shows, state 

officials have used such rationales to divide and subordinate rather than to protect. 

In keeping with the constitutional demand for equal protection under the Fourteenth 

Amendment, such pretextual arguments must fail.

Today, the racial separation of bathrooms is now rightly seen for what it is: 

immoral, insidious, and impermissible. Even while striving to overcome the 

enduring vestiges and latest iterations of prejudice, judicial precedents reaffirm that

30 See, e.g., Neal Katyal, Confession o f Error: The Solicitor General’s 
Mistakes During the Japanese-American Internment Cases (May 20, 2011), 
https://www.justice.gov/opa/blog/confession-error-solicitor-generals-mistakes- 
during-japanese-american-internment-cases.

27

https://www.justice.gov/opa/blog/confession-error-solicitor-generals-mistakes-during-japanese-american-internment-cases
https://www.justice.gov/opa/blog/confession-error-solicitor-generals-mistakes-during-japanese-american-internment-cases


our nation has a vast capacity for progress: “[W]hat once was a ‘natural’ and ‘self- 

evident’ ordering” of constitutional principles of equality “later comes to be seen as 

an artificial and invidious constraint on human potential and freedom.” City o f 

Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 466 (Marshall, J., concurring). Indeed, not one of the crass, 

stereotypical predictions about the dangers of racially integrating restrooms or 

swimming pools, neighborhoods, or beyond—have come to fruition, nor could they.

So too here. The legitimacy of any concerns about safety or privacy dissipates 

in the face of evidence that Drew has used bathrooms for some time without any 

harm to others. And the pretextual nature of these concerns is underscored by the 

School Board’s apparent lack of concern about safety and privacy in multi-user 

bathrooms with respect to cisgender students. This reveals that the School Board’s 

policy rests on nothing more than a belief that transgender youth—simply by being 

transgender—are somehow uniquely dangerous or sexually aggressive compared to 

their straight, lesbian, gay, or bisexual cisgender peers. That is a perverse 

reimagining of reality, given the well documented harms of discrimination and 

violence against transgender youth.jl A policy, like this one, “inexplicable by 

anything but animus toward the class it affects,” violates the Equal Protection 

Clause. Romer, 517 U.S. at 632.

31 See, e.g., LGBT Youth: Experiences with Violence, U.S. Dep’t of Health & 
Human Servs. (Nov. 12, 2014), https://www.cdc.gov/lgbthealth/youth.htm.

28

https://www.cdc.gov/lgbthealth/youth.htm


Today, our statutes and citizenry alike have a “continuing role in moving the 

Nation toward a more integrated society.” Tex. Dep’t o f Hous. & Cmty. Affs. v. 

Inclusive Cmtys. Project, Inc., 135 S. Ct. 2507, 2526 (2015). Drew Adams’s simple 

plea to be treated equally in the eyes of the law is an important step along that path.

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, this Court should affirm the decision belowr.

Date: Nov. 24, 2021 Respectfully Submitted,

/s/ Mcihogane D. Reed

Katherine Franke 
Director

Candace Bond-Theriault

Sherrilyn A. Ifill 
President and Director-Counsel 

Janai S. Nelson
Director o f Racial Justice Policy & Samuel Spital

Strategy Alexsis M. Johnson
COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL CENTER NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & 

FOR GENDER & SEXUALITY EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC.
LAW

435 W. 116th Street 
New York, NY 10027 
(212) 854-0061
katherine.franke@law.columbia.edu
cb3744@columbia.edu

Counsel for Amicus Curiae Columbia 
Law School Center for Gender & 
Sexuality Law

40 Rector Street, 5th floor 
New York, NY 10006 
(212) 965-2200

Jin Hee Lee 
Mahogane D. Reed*
NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & 

EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. 
700 14th Street NW, Suite 600 
Washington, DC 20005 
(202) 682-1300 
mreed@naacpldf.org 
*Counsel o f Record

Counsel for Amicus Curiae NAACP 
Legal Defense & Educational Fund, 
Inc.

29

mailto:katherine.franke@law.columbia.edu
mailto:cb3744@columbia.edu
mailto:mreed@naacpldf.org


CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE WITH FRAP 32(g)(1)

The undersigned certifies that this brief complies with the applicable type

face and volume limitations of Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure 29(a)(5). This 

brief contains 6,493 words, exclusive of the components that are excluded from the 

word count limitation in Rule 32(f), This certificate was prepared in reliance upon 

the word-count function of the word processing system used to prepare this brief 

(Microsoft Word). This brief complies with the typeface and type style requirements 

of Rule 32(a)(5) because it has been prepared in a proportionally spaced typeface 

using Times New Roman, font size 14.

/s/ Mahogane D. Reed_______________
Mahogane D. Reed 
NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & 

EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC.
700 14th Street NW, Suite 600 
Washington, DC 20005 
(202) 682-1300 
mreed@naacpldf.org

November 24, 2021

30

mailto:mreed@naacpldf.org


CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

In accordance with Rule 25(d) of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, I 

hereby certify that on November 24, 2021,1 electronically filed the foregoing Brief 

of Amici Curiae with the Clerk of the Court for the United States Court of Appeals 

for the Eleventh Circuit using the appellate CM/ECF system. Counsel for all parties 

to the case are registered CM/ECF users and will be served by the appellate CM/ECF 

system.

/s/ Mahogane D. Reed_______________
Mahogane D. Reed 
NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & 

EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC.
700 14th Street NW, Suite 600 
Washington, DC 20005 
(202) 682-1300 
mreed@naacpldf.org

31

mailto:mreed@naacpldf.org
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Adams v. School Board of St. Johns County, FL Brief of Amici Curiae LDF and Columbia Law School Center for Gender and Sexuality Law in Support of Plaintiff-Appellee

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