Civil Rights Legal professional: St. Johns County Shouldn’t Be Optimistic About Trans Toilet Ban

A federal court ruled last month that the St. Johns County School District was against the constitution by preventing a male transgender student from using the boys’ bathroom.

But this week the court agreed to reconsider that decision at the county’s request, which may have an impact on a small number of transgender children in the school system in northeast Florida.

One student who may be affected by the outcome is a 13-year-old transgender who is also the son of St. Johns County’s civil rights attorney Rook Ringer.

“I would like to know why they are spending – at this point it has to be over $ 100,000 for all of these appeals to stop the tiny minority of transgender children in St. Johns County from using the proper toilet.” Bell said. She asked not to give her son’s name to protect his privacy.

The St. Johns County School Board declined to comment on the story, but in court records, school board attorneys argued that the earlier rulings did not reflect the “privacy interests of students in using the toilet free from members to the contrary” would have taken biological sex into account. ”

Ringer said her son came out as a trans early in the 2020 school year and was able to use the boy’s toilet at his current middle school with no problems. If the 11th Atlanta District Court rules in favor of the school district, the boy would have to use the girls’ bathroom.

“If I were in this school and I was him and this transgender boy, I would be like, ‘Why are all these adults spending so much time and effort fighting me?'”

Ringer herself, a trans woman, recalled her own high school experience of getting to school early, putting on clothes and makeup before others got there, and then “keeping” them until after school she did not have to risk violence in any of the gender-sensitive bathrooms.

“It was bad then, much worse than it is today. But I would have thought if the President, the Department of Education, and the Supreme Court all said we shouldn’t discriminate against transgender children in such a way that we wouldn’t have those arguments that the school board was still trying to get their teeth off – and nail to mistreat transgender children. ”

Ringer said the 11th district decision to hear the case again is rare; If parties want to escalate their case after the Circuit Court’s decision, the next stop is usually the Supreme Court.

“The mere fact that you chose to hear it doesn’t mean you chose to overturn the decision. So if I were the St. John’s School District, I wouldn’t be particularly optimistic at this point, ”said Ringer.

Contact Sydney Boles at [email protected] or on Twitter at @sydneyboles.