EEOC Says You Can’t Prevent Trans People From Using Their Preferred Bathroom

Care2 Causes

In a groundbreaking ruling, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has said that the U.S. Army committed sex discrimination by refusing to let a trans employee use facilities that accord with her consistent gender presentation.

The case revolves around Tamara Lusardi, a software quality assurance specialist who worked at the U.S. Army Aviation & Missile Research, Development & Engineering Center (AMRDEC) in Alabama. Lusardi transitioned in 2010, and that’s when the discrimination began.

Her employers refused to use female pronouns and would routinely use Lusardi’s previous name in front of her and to co-workers and other people. In her official complaint Lusardi also notes that on several occasions her employers outed her to people who weren’t aware that she was trans. When confronted about this, the supervisor responsible for this behavior said that it was a “slip of the tongue.”

Lusardi was also told that as a result of transitioning, she would now have to use the single-user restroom while at work. When that toilet was out of service and Lusardi used the female facilities, she faced formal reprimands from her supervisor who told her that she was making other people “feel uncomfortable” and that, until she could provide proof of her “final surgery,” by which it was clearly indicated her supervisor meant genital change surgery, she must continue using the executive single-use facilities.

Feeling this amounted to unfair discrimination and a pattern of harassment, Ms. Lusardi filed a complaint in 2012.

In a 3-2 decision dated April 1, the EEOC agreed that Lusardi’s Army employers had abridged Ms. Lusardi of her constitutional right to “equal status, respect, and dignity in the workplace,” by not allowing her to access the same facilities as other women. In addition, the EEOC found that there was evidence of a pattern of verbal harassment centered around misgendering Lusardi that “was not accidental, but instead was intended to humiliate and ridicule”. The ruling also challenges the notion that these were “inadvertent and isolated slips of the tongue” because they had happened so frequently.

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