Court rules against School Board in transgender student's civil rights lawsuit. (SAR)

From the trivial headline to misspelling the legal term "judgment" as "judgement," St. Augustine Record demonstrates its mediocrity. It's a civil rights lawsuit. Once again, St. Johns County School Board has violated constitutional rights. Once again, a federal judge has ruled against the School Board. Three cheers for the independence of Article III federal courts.

No cheers for five gutless cowards who took direction from WILLIAM KORACH, then the St. Johns County Republican Executive Committee Chair, later defrocked and discredited, in small part due to taking a position on this issue with his transphobic hatred.

How many federal court battles must the St. Johns County School Board lose before it hires a staff lawyer and dumps somnambulistic, deeply conflicted corporate lawyer FRANK UPCHURCH, who falls asleep in meetings and gives crummy legal advice?

Transgender student wins restroom lawsuit

By The Record
Posted Jul 26, 2018 at 6:23 PM
Updated Jul 26, 2018 at 6:27 PM
St. Augustine Record

The St. Johns County School District can no longer keep a transgender Nease High School student from using the boys’ restroom at school, a federal judge has ruled.

The ruling came in a final judgement filed Thursday afternoon by U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Corrigan which enjoined the St. Johns County School Board from enforcing its policy that prohibits Drew Adams from using the boys’ bathroom.

The judgement (sic) follows a February bench trial that came after Adams and his mother, Erica Adams Kasper, sued the District over a policy that required him to use gender neutral bathrooms on the school’s campus.

Adams, who was born a girl, came out as a transgender boy his freshman year and subsequently underwent hormone treatment and surgery and used the boys’ restroom at the school for about six weeks until administration required him to use the gender-neutral rooms.

Corrigan, in his findings of fact and conclusions of law that accompanied the final judgement, noted the sensitive nature of the topic, but said the law was clearly on Adams’ side.

“When confronted with something affecting our children that is new, outside of our experience, and contrary to gender norms we thought we understood, it is natural that parents want to protect their children,” he wrote. “But the evidence is that Drew Adams poses no threat to the privacy or safety of any of his fellow students. Rather, Drew Adams is just like every other student at Nease High School, a teenager coming of age in a complicated, uncertain and changing world. When it comes to his use of the bathroom, the law requires that he be treated like any other boy.”

The school’s policy, he found, violated both federal Title IX education laws and Adams’ rights under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

“There is no doubt that the teachers and administrators of Nease High School


and the St. Johns County School District are caring professionals who have the best

interests of their students at heart,” Corrigan wrote in closing in the findings of fact. “Likewise, Drew Adams presented himself as a polite, forthright individual who is, without rancor, seeking to vindicate his civil rights. The lawyers for both sides have also conducted themselves professionally. All involved are to be commended for the way they have handled a difficult and sensitive situation.”

Adams will be a senior when the school year starts in August.


Comments:

Edward Adelbert Slavin

1. Correct application of law to fact by Judge Timothy Corrigan. Kudos.
2. Retired Florida National Guard JAG Corps Colonel Elizabeth Masters was right. See her 2017 St. Augustine Record letter here: http://cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com/2017/11/lawyer-elizabeth-masters-on-transgender.html
3. How much money did our St. Johns County School Board waste this time?
4. How many lawsuits has it lost because the Board majority often panders to fundamentalists and haters?
5. The ONLY reason Drew had to sue is because of the School Board's ignorant, intransigent intolerance, unsupported by substantial evidence.
6. Cui bono? (Who benefits?).
7. Ask louche longtime School Board Attorney, FRANK UPCHURCH and the Establishment law firm of UPCHURCH, BAILEY AND UPCHURCH about how much money it makes from its deeply conflicted, no-bid, part-time, decades-long legal work for St. Johns County School Board. UPCHURCH falls asleep in meetings -- color him colorless, unwilling to take a stand in favor of student rights -- like other government lawyers, he counts to three, eschewing legal scholarship. Pitiful.
8. The St. Johns County School Board's LATEST "massive resistance" to civil rights litigation received significant encouragement from organized haters, including KKK and the satraps at the St. Johns County Republican Executive Committee (SJCREC), who were later rightly renounced by the Republican Party of Florida.
9. In particular, transphobic hatred was stirred up by disgraced, deposed former SJCREC Chair WILLIAM KORACH, whom RPOF found acted ultra vires in taking a position.
10. Congratulations, Drew. We salute you! Ignoranti non carborndum. « less
1

Richard Guzinya
updated 4 days ago
What could possibly go wrong? When is it going to write its book?

Edward Adelbert Slavin
Reply to @Richard Guzinya: Bigot. Is that your real name?