Democrats in Congress are expected to introduce legislation this year that would create nationwide nondiscrimination protections for LGBT people in employment, housing, education, credit, and public accommodations. Conservatives have opposed such protections in the past by claiming that they are “special” (i.e., that the LGBT community is undeserving of them), that the resulting lawsuits would be frivolous, or that the provisions are simply unnecessary because discrimination isn’t taking place. This week, three different complaints were filed alleging discrimination based on perceived gender, reinforcing the reality that these laws are very much needed.
Discrimination By A Hospital
In Washington, DC, a transgender woman has filed a discrimination complaint against MedStar Georgetown University Hospital for refusing to provide her with breast implant surgery because of her gender identity. Alexa Rodriguez, Vice President of DC’s Latino LGBT History Project, told the Washington Blade that she had been cleared for the surgery earlier this year, but during the time she spent securing coverage from her insurance provider, the hospital had changed its policy and refused to do the surgery. At least two other trans women have similarly been denied care there in recent months.
In statements to the Blade, Marianne Worley, the hospital’s director of media relations, seemed to suggest that because the hospital does not provide comprehensive transition care, it has adopted a new policy of not providing any specific service related to transition care either. “Our conclusion has been that a high quality gender transition service is best delivered in the context of an integrated program rather than in a one off manner, and such a program does not exist at MedStar Georgetown.” Rodriguez, like others, was referred to MedStar Georgetown by Whitman-Walker Health, a DC clinic that specializes in LGBT care, including transition. Such a referral was made because transgender women were receiving care at MedStar Georgetown as recently as January.
There is speculation that the care was halted because of complaints from conservative Catholic officials affiliated with Georgetown University. In a follow-up comment to the Blade, Worley seemed to confirm this, stating, “MedStar Georgetown is a Catholic hospital and, consistent with all Catholic hospitals, it operates under the Ethical and Religious Directives of the Catholic Church.”
The complaint was filed under DC’s Human Rights Act, which, unlike federal law, protects against discrimination on the basis of gender identity in public accommodations. If MedStar Georgetown will perform the same breast augmentation surgery for cisgender women, then it would be a violation of the law to categorically deny it to transgender women.
Discrimination By A School
Virginia schools have been struggling to accommodate transgender students. The Virginia High School League approved a policy to allow transgender athletes to participate on the right teams, but only after passing a restrictive policy first. Fairfax schools approved transgender nondiscrimination protections, but faced national outcry from opponents for doing so. In Stafford County, the school board voted to bar a transgender fourth grader from using the right bathroom. Now one student is fighting back.
Gavin Grimm, supported by the ACLU, has sued Gloucester County schools for banning him from the boys’ room. He was specifically singled out at a public school board meeting, where he was called a “girl” and a “freak.” The board passed the policy restricting his bathroom access even though he had used the boys’ room for some time without any complaints.
The suit relies on Title IX, which guarantees nondiscrimination protections in education on the basis of sex and has been interpreted by the Department of Education to protect gender identity as well. Despite the Department’s guidance to that end, the protection is not guaranteed by law, as a trans student who sued the University of Pittsburgh over a similar matter found out this year.
The suit discusses how Gavin has been ostracized from the girls’ room, where others perceive him to be a boy and ask him to leave. He has also found that using the school’s single-stall restrooms actually spotlights him as “the black sheep,” describing walking to the rarely used facilities as a “walk of shame.”
Discrimination By A Restaurant
In January, Cortney Bogorad was trying to use the restroom at Fishbone’s Rhythm Kitchen Cafe in Detroit when she was forcibly — and literally — tossed out onto the street. According to the lawsuit she has filed against the eatery, a man who identified himself as a security guard confronted her in the restroom, shouting, “This is a woman’s bathroom! If you are a man, come out!”
Bogorad informed him that she was a woman, but he did not listen. (She is, in fact, not even transgender.) Instead, he shouted right in her face, “Get out of the women’s restroom!” She even tried to offer her ID to prove her gender, and her friend who was also in the bathroom stood up for her, but he was not interested. He place his hands on her shoulders and, according to the suit, “aggressively pushed her out of the restroom, into the restaurant.”
There, she reached out to someone she believed to be the restaurant’s manager, offering to explain the situation and to again show her ID, but the manager also ignored her. After the guard forced his badge in her face and she swatted it away, he picked her up “against her will by her hooded sweater and bra,” carried her to the door and threw her onto the street. Her upper body was exposed to other patrons and she sustained physical damages, including “contusions, wrist injuries, should injuries, and scarring which required medical treatment.”
Michigan’s state nondiscrimination law does not contain explicit protections based on gender identity, but Detroit’s does. According to Section 27–6–1 of Detroit law, “it shall be an unlawful practice of any person being the owner, lessee, proprietor, manager, superintendent, agent or employee of any place of public accommodation, public service, resort, amusement or medical care facility, because of race, color, religious beliefs, national origin, age, marital status, disability, sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression of an individual, directly or indirectly to refuse, restrict, withhold from or deny to such person any of the accommodations, services, privileges, advantages or facilities thereof.”
If a trans woman had eaten at one of Fishbone’s other locations outside of Detroit’s city limits, there would be no law explicitly protecting her from the kind of profiling and discrimination Bogorad described in her suit.
Update:
This post has been updated to clarify that though Cortney Bogorad was profiled for her perceived gender, she does not identify as transgender.