Transgender woman allowed to sue S.F. over alleged discrimination

A California state civil rights agency can sue San Francisco on behalf of a transgender woman who said a city employee called her a “freak” and barred her from a women’s restroom on city property, a judge ruled Tuesday, rejecting the city’s claim that it was not covered by state anti-discrimination laws.

Tanesh Nutall said the incident happened in February 2016 when she was working for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and attended a city Department of Public Health training session on working with poor and traumatized clients.

When she tried to use the restroom during a break, she said, a woman who worked for the city Department of Police Accountability told her she wasn’t allowed in the women’s room, shut the door, and later called her a “f—ing man” and a “f—ing freak.”

City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s office disputed Nutall’s account but said that even if it was accurate, the state laws — which prohibit gender-based discrimination by any

“business establishment” or state-funded “program or activity” did not apply to the employee or her agency.

The state Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which sued the city on Nutall’s behalf, countered that the law defines “business establishments” broadly to cover local agencies open to the public. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn agreed Tuesday and refused to dismiss the department’s suit.

The allegations in the suit, if true, would show that “the city was conducting itself as a business establishment,” as defined by the law, Kahn said.

He said the state agency had failed to offer evidence that the city employee was part of a state-funded “program or activity” but could make another attempt to do so before that part of the suit was dismissed. Overall, however, Kahn’s ruling allowed the suit to proceed.

Nutall has filed a separate suit, in her own name, that is pending in federal court.

Nutall, now 52, said she was so traumatized by the incident that she suffered a nervous breakdown and left her job with the AIDS Foundation, where she had worked as an AIDS educator and transgender program manager. Unable to afford housing in San Francisco, she and her husband left the city and now live in the Sacramento area.

In a statement released Tuesday by her lawyers at the Transgender Law Center, Nutall said the city was arguing, in effect, that “I don’t have the right to use the bathroom in a city building without being harassed because

of who I am. All my life I’d heard about San Francisco as a place where transgender people could be safe and accepted as ourselves, but the city itself is saying that’s a lie.”

The Department of Police Accountability, formerly known as the Office of Citizen Complaints, apologized to Nutall after the incident. Herrera’s office was not apologetic, however, in its response to Kahn’s ruling.

“This city has been a leader on equality for decades,” said Herrera’s spokesman, John Coté. “We also have a legal responsibility to San Francisco taxpayers. It is our understanding that the factual allegations in this lawsuit are not entirely accurate and that a city employee did not violate Ms. Nutall’s protected rights. We look forward to the full picture coming out in court.”