Drew Adams, Nease High School transgender student (news4jax)
Our maladroit, mean-spirited, mendacious St. Johns County School Board should NEVER have denied Drew Adams his legal and constitutional rights as a transgender boy.
Bigoted dull Republicans and St. Johns County KKK members or sympathizers -- like rebarbative reprobate St. Johns County Republican Executive Committee (SJC REC) Chair WILLIAM KORACH -- and inept lawyers from the Upchurch law firm empowered this bad, mean and base decision by St. Johns County School Board, formerly run by segregationists.
Fatuous furious fatwas from fulminating fundamentalists -- and a basket of deplorable dull dotards on REC -- must no longer determine School Board policy.
Upchurch, Bailey and Upchurch law firm founder FRANK D. UPCHURCH walked out of the 1948 Democratic National Convention, along with racist segregationist "Dixiecrat" S.C. then-Governor Strom Thurmond, whom he supported for President.
Former Florida Governor candidate FRANK D. UPCHURCH walked out of the 1948 Democratic National Convention because President Harry S Truman and the Democratic Party expressed support for civil rights laws.
Strom Thurmond, FRANK UPCHURCH and a few other racist segregationists walked out of the DNC and formed their own political party ("Dixiecrats" after Minneapolis Mayor Humphrey gave an epic speech (full text here), where the future Senator, Vice President and 1968 Democratic Presidential nominee said, "The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights."
This is the speech that Hubert Horatio Humphrey, then Minneapolis Mayor, gave in support of civil rights plank, resulting in FRANK D. UPCHUCH's walkout:
The apple does not fall far from the tree. FRANK D. UPCHUCH's son, Hamilton Upchurch, Sr., was a St. Augustine City Commissioner and Chairman of the Florida House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, who blocked the Equal Rights Amendment from being adopted in Florida, which would have become the 36th state (38 states were required to adopt the ERA).
Our School Board must fire inept Upchurch law firm, hire full-time counsel. Now.
Retired Florida National Guard JAG Colonel Elizabeth Masters wrote in Record July 11, 2017:
Don’t waste time,money fighting bathroom gender
Editor: I would like school superintendent Tim Forson to allow transgender student Drew Adams to use the restroom of his choice, starting now. Please let another, wealthier, school district become the test case for the transgender restroom issue.
Mr. Adams is not bothering anyone. There are restrooms in the art class and main office for those who wish to avoid his presence.
With even the military gearing up to allow in transgender soldiers, clearly the school district is preparing to champion a losing cause. Has the school board forgotten the Webster Elementary First Amendment debacle that cost well over $100,000, not including all the outside counsel fees and costs the we paid to defend the case? Sadly I predict the county will march on stubbornly in this case, lose it or settle it belatedly, and that it will cost a lot of money to do so. The money would be better spent in the classroom.
By Andrew Pantazi
Posted Feb 17, 2018 at 6:40 AM
Updated Feb 17, 2018 at 6:40 AM
St. Augustine Record
The trial started with one question, and on Friday, it ended with the same. Is Drew Adams a boy or a girl?
The federal lawsuit a transgender teen filed last summer against the St. Johns County school district over the right to use the boys bathroom culminated in oral arguments Friday that dipped in to a barrage of hypothetical questions designed to either narrow or broaden the constitutional question at play.
But at the heart of the lawsuit was one question that Drew’s attorneys first asked him when he testified in December, and it’s the same question that federal Judge Timothy Corrigan said is at the core of the case.
In his freshman year, Drew came out as a transgender boy. He changed his clothes and his hair, he underwent surgery and began hormone treatment, and for about six weeks, he used the boys bathroom. But then the district told him he would have to start using a gender-neutral bathroom or the girls room.
The school district established more gender-neutral bathrooms at the school, but Drew’s lawyers argued that it was unfair to treat Drew, who is now 17 and a junior at Nease High School, differently from other boys just because he was born with female sexual organs.
Corrigan must decide if St. Johns County’s unwritten policy violates federal Title IX education laws and the 14th Amendment’s equal protection guarantees. His decision could either cement St. Johns County’s decision to look at biological sex as something different from gender identity, or it could transform the way the county’s schools treat gender identity and bathroom rights.
On Friday, Corrigan distilled the two sides’ arguments. Both sides agree, he said, that boys should use boys bathrooms, and girls should use girls bathrooms. Yet Drew says he should use the boys bathroom because of his gender identity. The school district says Drew must use the girls bathroom because he was born with female sexual organs.
The district’s attorney, Terry Harmon, said that neither side disputes “that the school treated Drew as a boy in all other respects except the bathroom. The question is why, and the reason why is what the school board argued is the physiological difference between males and females. There are differences that are enduring.” Bathrooms, district officials had argued, are spaces where schools must care for students’ safety and privacy by keeping transgender students away from the bathrooms of their gender identity.
Corrigan pointed out that the school district was unable to point to any example at any school district of an incident related to a transgender student using the bathroom of their choice.
“I guess my problem with the argument is there is zero evidence,” Corrigan said.
“But does there have to be evidence?” Harmon replied.
“All these places that are doing this have reported zero problems,” Corrigan said. “None of the things that all the people who are worried about have ever happened, and you were not able to induce any evidence that it happened, nor were any of the people who worked on the task force, nor were any of the people who worked on this all over the country. While I agree with you that you don’t always have to have a demonstrated problem before you make a policy, it does make one wonder whether the fear, the safety concerns, the privacy concerns are based on things that are not the reality on the ground.”
Corrigan spent much of the morning asking hypothetical questions: If it’s constitutional to offer people with disabilities a separate bathroom, then could there be a constitutional case for giving a separate bathroom for transgender students? Does a student have to change their physical appearance before they can begin transitioning? If he ruled the policy unconstitutional, he asked Drew’s lawyers, then would the locker room and shower policies also be unconstitutional?
Tara Borelli, a lawyer for Lambda Legal, replied that Drew was only seeking to have the current policy barring him from boys bathrooms overturned. Beyond that, “we would love the opportunity to talk to present counsel about what a policy might look like.”
Corrigan also asked a barrage of hypotheticals to the school district: If Drew went to the girls bathroom, he asked, wouldn’t girls be more perturbed to have someone who looks for all intents and purposes like a boy in their bathroom? And what about adults who visit sporting events? Do transgender adults have to go into the bathrooms of their sex assigned at birth?
“If you are going into the girls bathroom,” Harmon replied, “you are a girl, not a transgender girl, not internally. You don’t get to internally make that call. I don’t think it’s an ambiguous concept at all.”
Harmon also said that if Corrigan ruled the bathroom policy unconstitutional, the district would have to stop using sex-segregated bathrooms.
“I don’t really think that,” Corrigan replied. “I hear you, but I don’t think your opponents are saying there can’t be boys bathrooms or girls bathrooms. The question is who gets to go in them. ... If [Drew] was using the bathroom at Nease High School and a girl came in, he would not want the girl to come in, just like the other boys wouldn’t.”
At one point, Corrigan relied on a legal argument used in “Miracle on 34th Street.” In the movie, a judge must determine whether a man who claims to be Santa Claus is telling the truth. After the United States Post Office starts sending the man letters addressed to Santa. “Since the United States Government declares this man to be Santa Claus,” the judge says, “this court will not dispute it.”
Similarly, Corrigan noted that Drew has had his birth certificate changed to say he’s a boy, and his driver’s license says he’s a boy, and if he chose to compete in sports, the Florida High School Athletic Association would acknowledge him as a boy. When Drew came to the federal courthouse in December, Corrigan noted, he used the men’s bathroom.
“If official government agencies recognize Mr. Adams as a boy, why doesn’t the St. Johns County School Board?” he asked the district. Harmon replied by noting the district’s definition of sex meaning sex at birth.
Corrigan promised both sides he would take a long time to decide the case, though he will try to write an opinion before Drew starts his senior year.
“You will never hear me or read an opinion from me about whether this is a good rule or a bad rule. That is not my job. That is the school board’s job. My job is to decide whether the law has been violated or the constitution has been violated. If it has, that is my job to say so. If it hasn’t, it is also my job to say so.”
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