Restaurant faces gender discrimination suit

The Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund on Tuesday filed a lawsuit in Manhattan State Supreme Court against Caliente Cab Company in connection with the refusal of the branch at Seventh Ave. S. at Bleecker St. to allow a lesbian patron to use the women’s room after the end of the Gay Pride march in June because she didn’t look feminine enough.

Khadijah Farmer was in the women’s room on the afternoon of June 24 when a 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, as well as unspecified punitive damages for the chain’s “intentional violation” of city and state civil rights laws.

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