The Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund on Oct. 2 filed a lawsuit in Manhattan State Supreme Court against Caliente Cab Company in connection with the refusal of the Caliente branch at Seventh Ave. S. at Bleecker St. to allow a lesbian patron to use the women’s room after the end of June’s Gay Pride March because she didn’t look feminine enough.
Khadijah Farmer was in the women’s room on the afternoon of June 24 when the bouncer burst in, pounded on the door of the stall she was using, ejected her from the bathroom and ordered her and her friends to leave the restaurant.
The suit seeks an injunction barring the chain from continuing to discriminate on the basis of gender expression or engaging in sex stereotyping, unspecified damages for violating Farmer’s civil rights and unspecified punitive damages for the eatery’s “intentional violation” of the city and state civil rights law.
