Army Ordered to Pay Damages for Discrimination; Trans Man Kept from Women’s Bathroom

The Obama administration has ordered the U.S. Army to pay damages for discriminating against a transgender worker by denying the one-time man access to the women’s bathroom after he “transitioned” to female, thus changing his “gender identity.”

Additionally, the administration has determined that the Army also discriminated against the employee by failing to use his new female name (Tamara Lusardi) and instead continuing to use the name the man was originally hired under. The case involves a military veteran who worked as a civilian software specialist at the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center (AMRDEC) in Redstone, Alabama. Lusardi served in the Army from 1986 to 1993 and claims he suffered in a hostile workplace when management and co-workers kept calling him “sir” after becoming a woman and legally changing his name.

This month the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the bloated federal agency that enforces the nation’s workplace discrimination laws,ordered the Army to pay up for violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by committing sex discrimination against Lusardi. The EEOC tweaked the 1960s federal law to include transgender to the mix, asserting that it constitutes “gender identity discrimination” and therefore falls under Title VII of the Civil Rights Law. The agency defines transgender as persons whose gender identity, gender expression or behavior does not conform to that typically associated with the sex to which they were assigned at birth.

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