They Can’t Do That!

And they found out the hard way that they broke the law.

Public accommodation laws that protect us are a lot easier to enforce the employment laws, when you deny entry is a lot easier to prove than they fired you because you’re trans.

D.C. restaurant fined $7,000 after asking transgender woman for ID before letting her use bathroom
The Washington Post
By Justin Wm. Moyer
January 17, 2019

A D.C. restaurant will pay $7,000 as part of a settlement after an employee tried to stop a transgender woman from using a women’s restroom last summer, D.C.’s attorney general said this week.

Charlotte Clymer, a transgender woman and activist with the Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for LGBTQ equality, was asked to show identification June 22 when she tried to use a women’s restroom at Cuba Libre, a downtown Cuban restaurant and rum bar.

Clymer said the employee followed her into the restroom, then a manager also asked for identification when she emerged from the restroom. After a confrontation with the manager — at which point she pulled up the D.C. Human Rights Act on her phone — she said she was told to leave, and then called police.

The D.C. Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on gender identity or expression in housing, employment, public accommodations and educational institutions.

Beside the fine the restaurant took other steps to make sure it didn’t happen there again.

Barry Gutin, a Cuba Libre co-owner, said in a statement that the restaurant performed the training and signage requirements, and also plans to offer training open to all D.C.-area restaurant employees to “help understand the challenges of the LGBTQ community.”

“Our focus now is to help ensure safety for D.C.’s transgender community at all area restaurants,” the statement said.

The restaurant apologized after the June incident. Racine, who said the employees involved were fired, thanked Cuba Libre’s management and staff for “cooperating fully in our investigation and seeking to rectify their wrongdoing.”

Clymer called the settlement “a great outcome.”

Something to consider if you are in this predicament, not only report the discrimination to the agency responsible for enforcing the non-discrimination law but also the state liquor commission. Here in Connecticut a bar that did the same thing as the DC bar had their liquor license suspended for a week.