Levka<p><a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/transrights" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>transrights</span></a></p><p>"Minnesota teen says server forced her to prove her gender in restaurant bathroom</p><p>The 18-year-old high school student said she unzipped her hoodie to show she had breasts after a Buffalo Wild Wings server didn't believe she is a woman.</p><p>A Minnesota teenager filed a charge of discrimination against a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant Tuesday, alleging a server followed her into the women’s restroom and demanded she 'prove' she was a girl.</p><p>Gerika Mudra, 18, went to dinner in April with a friend in Owatonna, about an hour south of Minneapolis. When she went to the restroom, a server followed her inside and banged on the stall door while 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.</p><p>Mudra, a biracial lesbian who isn’t transgender, said that she has been in similar situations before, when people have suggested she’s in the wrong restroom, but that when she tells them she’s a woman they leave her alone. However, when she came out of the stall at Buffalo Wild Wings and told the server, 'I am a lady,' she said, the server responded, 'You have to get out now,' Gender Justice said in a statement.</p><p>(. . .)</p><p>Nineteen states have laws that prohibit trans people from using bathrooms that align with their gender identities in K-12 schools, and in many of those states the restrictions apply to other government-owned buildings, as well, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank. Twenty-seven states prohibit trans people from playing on school sports teams that align with their gender identities.</p><p>Even before such laws, trans people had long reported facing harassment in public restrooms and avoided using them as a result. There have been several reports this year of women who aren’t transgender alleging harassment in public restrooms because they were suspected of being trans, including at the U.S. Capitol in January, Phoenix in February, Florida in March and Boston in May.</p><p>(. . .)</p><p>'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.'</p><p>Even if Mudra had been trans, she would be able to file a discrimination complaint under state law in Minnesota, which is one of 21 states and Washington, D.C., that explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in public accommodations, according to the Movement Advancement Project. Two states explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation only, and six additional states interpret existing measures against discrimination based on sex to also include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Twenty-one states don’t have explicit protections from discrimination based on gender identity in public accommodations."</p><p><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/minnesota-teen-says-server-forced-prove-gender-restaurant-bathroom-rcna224562" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/m</span><span class="invisible">innesota-teen-says-server-forced-prove-gender-restaurant-bathroom-rcna224562</span></a></p>