Say No To Hate.

What do you do if you’re a waitress or waiter and you hear bigotry? Do you still wait on them or do you refuse to serve them and you do it could cost you your job?

Server in Wisconsin fired for refusing to serve anti-transgender customers
By: WTMJ Staff
October 15, 2019

FOND DU LAC, Wisc. — A woman says she was fired from her serving job at a local restaurant after he refused to serve guests she says were making transphobic remarks.

Brittany Spencer worked as a server at Fat Joe's Bar & Grill in Fond du Lac for a few months. On Saturday night, she says some of the guests she was serving began making disparaging comments about gender identity while a transgender woman was in the bar.

"They were asking me if I thought it was disgusting and wrong and why we would let someone like that into the establishment," Spencer said. "To which I answered, no, I do not agree with that and walked away."
[…]
Spencer says she went to her manager to ask if someone else could serve the table because she didn't feel comfortable.

"[My manager] essentially told me to suck it up or go home," Spencer said. "To which I said, OK. I will leave."

Then I feel that she made a big mistake…

But before their conversation, Spencer took to Facebook to sound off about what happened. Her post generated more than a dozen comments.

Her boss said he was going to talk to her the next day and not firer her but he said when she posted it on Facebook he decided to fire her.

So what are the issues here?

• First Amendment
• Non-discrimination laws
• Labor Laws

First off… I am not a lawyer so these are only my interpretation of the laws.

Unfortunately, there is a right to spew hate but it only applies to the government “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...” So you do not have right, what most people think, to say anything you want wherever you want, what the law does mean is that anti-discrimination laws cannot prohibit speech. In other words bigots can say anything they want and the law cannot stop them. However, businesses are not covered by the First Amendment.

That means the bar owner didn’t have to put up with what the patrons were saying, there was no 1^st Amendment rights for the patrons.

Non-discrimination laws in Wisconsin do not cover gender identity and/or expression discrimination.

Title VII might covers employment but since the waitress is not trans the law does not cover her.

The bar owner said,

"We don't discriminate against anyone," Wallender said. "If you want to walk in our front door and you want to have our food or drinks, watch TV, watch live music we provide, we're going to serve you as best we can and make you happy to your standards."

The bar owner sounds like he took the high ground but he didn’t, instead he copped out and said he didn’t discriminate. But I wonder how it be if instead of lambasting us the patrons were “white supremacist” and were saying racist speech would he still let them stay? Or was it just because they were attacking us that it was okay.

If the bar was in a state that protects us, then from what I understand the business would have had a duty to have a place of business free from discrimination but since Wisconsin does not have a law protecting us there is not much the waitress can do.

I feel glad she stood up for us and sad that she fired for protecting us.