A teenager has accused Buffalo Wild Wings of discrimination after a waiter allegedly followed her into the women’s restroom and asked her to “prove” she was a girl.
In April, Gerika Mudra went to dinner with a friend in Owatonna, which is roughly an hour south of Minneapolis. When she walked to the restroom, a server followed her in and hammered on the stall door, saying, “This is a women’s restroom. The man needs to get out of here,” according to Gender Justice, a Minnesota gender-equality organization that filed the charge on Mudra’s behalf, as reported by NBC News.
The 18-year-old, a biracial lesbian who is not transgender, claimed that she has experienced similar circumstances in the past when others have implied that she is in the wrong washroom, but that they often leave her alone when she identifies herself as a woman.
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However, Gender Justice stated in a statement that when Mudra emerged from the Buffalo Wild Wings stall and told the waiter, “I am a lady,” the server replied, “You have to get out now.”
Mudra explained that she felt compelled to prove to the server that she is a woman, so she unzipped her hoodie to reveal her breasts. According to Mudra, the server left the restroom without saying anything.
“She made me feel very uncomfortable,” Mudra said. “After that, I just don’t like going in public bathrooms. I just hold it in. … I want to be able to use the bathroom in peace.”
Gender Justice filed the charge of discrimination with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, claiming that her treatment was against the state’s Human Rights Act, which forbids discrimination against individuals on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, among other protected statuses.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Sara Jane Baldwin, senior staff attorney at Gender Justice, stated that although Mudra is not trans, the server’s actions “were based on assumptions that she made about” her. She also noted that Minnesota law prohibits discrimination based on stereotypes or presumptions about protected characteristics, such as gender identity.
“Businesses have a legal obligation not to just have antidiscrimination policies on paper, but to train staff and ensure that those policies are followed in real time,” Baldwin said. “When that doesn’t happen, the business is liable for the harm caused.”
According to Gender Justice, Mudra’s situation “reflects a broader climate of fear and suspicion aimed at anyone who doesn’t conform to narrow expectations of what girls and women ‘should’ look like.” Although Minnesota hasn’t passed any such legislation, the wave of state laws that target transgender people—specifically, their access to gender-neutral restrooms and school sports—has contributed significantly to that disapproval.
“This kind of gender policing is, unfortunately, nothing new,” Megan Peterson, executive director at Gender Justice, said in a statement. “And yet, in our current climate we have to ask: What if Gerika had been a trans person? Would this story have ended differently? That’s the terrifying reality too many trans people live with every day.”
Minnesota is one of 21 states and Washington, D.C., that specifically forbid discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in public accommodations, meaning that even if Mudra had been trans, she could have filed a discrimination complaint under Minnesota law, according to NBC News.
