It Is Illegal

Here in Connecticut and in California it is illegal to video record in places that you have an expectation of privacy like a bathroom.

A woman running for Congress filmed herself yelling at a transgender woman for using the bathroom at Denny's
Business Insider
By Kate Taylor
May 19, 2018

• Viral footage appears to show a transgender woman being kicked out of Denny's after using the women's restroom.
• Jazmina Saavedra, who's running for US Congress and is the spokeswoman for Latinos for Trump, posted a video of herself monitoring the restroom and saying there was "a man inside saying he's a lady."
• Denny's said that it is "extremely disturbed by the incident" and that the customer was removed after drug paraphernalia was spotted in the bathroom — not due to the person's gender identity.

According to a spokesperson, Denny's policy is "that our transgender guests and team members should be allowed to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with."

Viral footage shows a transgender women being confronted in a Denny's bathroom by a woman running for Congress.

Jazmina Saavedra, who's running for US Congress in California's 44th District and is the spokeswoman for the California branch of Latinos for Trump, posted a video on Facebook on Tuesday from inside a Denny's in California. The video shows Saavedra monitoring the women's restroom, loudly discussing that a person who appears to be a transgender woman is using the bathroom.

"They put us in danger ... a woman like me trying to use the ladies' room with a man inside saying he's a lady," Saavedra says.

The person, originally hidden inside a stall as Saavedra films in the bathroom, says that the congressional hopeful is "invading my privacy." Saavedra then accuses the individual of invading her privacy.

Okay, both California and Connecticut have non-discrimination laws that protect us and allows us to use the bathroom of our gender identity and clearly Denny’s violated the law. Here in Connecticut where a trans person was kicked out of a bar on karaoke night because she was “making the other customers “uncomfortable”  we fined by the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities and they allow had their liquor license suspended, I imagine the same thing can happen in California.

Now about the woman video recording in the bathroom. Around the 30 second mark you can see she was video recording in the bathroom itself. Legal Beagle says…

Unlike the U.S. Constitution, the California Constitution contains an explicit guarantee of privacy in Article I, Section 1 of its Declaration of Rights. Its courts have applied this protection to the workplace, schools and the state government. For this right to be violated, video surveillance must fulfill three criteria: 1) It constitutes an intrusion. 2) It intrudes in a location or context where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. 3) It outweighs other interests by the gravity of the alleged violation…
[…]
Under federal law, a conversation or other encounter may be videotaped as long as one person consents to the recording. However, California has expanded the law to both parties. As a result, if you wanted to interview a celebrity in a private location, he or she would need to consent to being taped before you could proceed. Violation of this law is punishable under Cal. Penal Code §§ 631, 632. A first offense of electronic eavesdropping is punishable by a fine of up to $2,500 and up to one year of jail. Recording and disclosure of footage carries a separate penalty. Under Cal. Penal Code § 637.2(a), any victim of these violations can recover punitive civil damages of up to three times the amount of actual damages.

So she is in deep do-do.

• First, she video recorded a conversation with getting permission from all parties.
• Second, she posted the video online.
• Third, this one is interesting. If she recorded the video without sound it would not be an additional crime but because she had audio on the recording she committed another crime, she needed the consent of all parties in the audio recording.

Connecticut has a similar law where you cannot make a video recording where a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy.