Irvine, CA, USA - June 18, 2022: Buffalo Wild Wings logo is seen on the door at one of its restaurants in Irvine. Buffalo Wild Wings is an American casual dining restaurant and sports bar franchise. (Photo credit: Tada Images / Shutterstock)
An 18-year-old high school student in Minnesota was humiliated after an incident in which she says a server at Buffalo Wild Wings cornered her in the restroom and demanded she prove her gender, reported NBC News on Tuesday.
"Gerika Mudra, 18, went to dinner in April with a friend in Owatonna, about an hour south of Minneapolis," said the report. "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."
Mudra is not transgender. A biracial lesbian with relatively short hair, she told NBC she often gets questioned in the women's room, but is left alone when she explains she is a woman. But that didn't happen in this case.
Per the complaint filed with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, the server told her, “You have to get out now,” even after she said, "I am a lady." At that point, "Mudra said she felt she had to prove to the server that she is a woman, so she unzipped her hoodie to show she has breasts. The server didn’t say anything in response but left the restroom, Mudra said." She went on to add that the whole situation made her "very uncomfortable."
“Businesses have a legal obligation not to just have anti-discrimination policies on paper, but to train staff and ensure that those policies are followed in real time,” said Sara Jane Baldwin, senior staff attorney with Gender Justice. “When that doesn’t happen, the business is liable for the harm caused.”
Across the nation in recent years, Republican lawmakers have introduced measures to place greater restrictions on transgender accommodation in public spaces, which critics say could also affect people who do not conform to traditional gender presentation.
The heightened political atmosphere around the issue has also led to hoax panics, as happened earlier this year when Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) raised the alarm about "a guy" in the women's restrooms on Capitol Hill, which turned out not to exist.