A printing company in the US has been forced to pay $115,000 in compensation and issue a personal apology to a transsexual man, for refusing to let him use female toilets.
Minnesota based Deluxe Financial Services will also be required to make several policy changes to accommodate transsexuals in the workplace, as part of a legal settlement.
Lawyers acting for the man, known as Britney Austin, claimed that the company had violated the Civil Rights Act.
Demands
Austin received backing from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a US Government agency charged with investigating alleged discrimination in the workplace.
In 2011, he told Deluxe Financial Services that he was ‘transitioning to become a woman’ and demanded the right to use female facilities and have his name changed on official documents.
However, management refused to let him do so, as he had not had sex-change surgery.
Legal action
Austin argued that the surgery should be covered by health insurance, paid for by the company, but the policy Deluxe operated did not consider such surgery a medical necessity.
As a result of the legal action, Deluxe Financial Services may have to fund ‘gender reassignment’ surgery and hormone treatment for employees in future.
The company will also be required to introduce a policy allowing transsexual employees to use toilets “commensurate with their gender identity”.
Lies
The demands of the transsexual lobby in the UK were highlighted last week in a comment piece by Simon Calvert, Deputy Director of The Christian Institute.
Responding to a report from Parliament’s Women and Equalities Committee, Mr Calvert stressed that although transsexual people are absolutely entitled to the same dignity as anyone else, MPs must stop trying to force people to agree with transsexualism itself.
The Women and Equalities Committee called for a move towards “self-declaration” of gender, an ‘X’ option for passports and 16 and 17-year-olds to be allowed to apply for gender recognition.
Mr Calvert said: “Transsexual people need patient help to come to terms with reality. The law must stop forcing people to lie about other people’s gender.”
