Gerika Mudra — an 18-year-old cis biracial lesbian high school student in Minnesota — filed a discrimination complaint against Buffalo Wild Wings, alleging that, while enjoying dinner with a friend around the Easter holiday in April, a female employee at the chicken restaurant’s Owatonna location followed her into the women’s restroom and demanded proof of her female gender.
Minnesota has no laws restricting restroom use by transgender people. However, Mudra’s lawsuit — filed with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights by the LGBTQ+-inclusive legal group Gender Justice — alleges that the employee violated the Minnesota Human Rights Act, a law that explicitly prohibits discrimination in public accommodations based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The employee reportedly pounded on a bathroom stall door and said, “This is a women’s restroom. The man needs to get out of here.” When Mudra exited the stall, she told the employee, “I am a lady,” NBC News reported. The server reportedly responded, “You have to get out now.”
In response, Mudra unzipped her hoodie to show that she has breasts. (Mudra was wearing a shirt that covered her chest.) The employee reportedly said nothing in response, but left the restroom. Buffalo Wild Wings didn’t respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
“This wasn’t the first time something like this happened, but this is like the worst time,” Mudra said in a video created by Gender Justice. “This one… she was like, mad, screaming. She made me feel very uncomfortable.”
“After that, I just don’t like going in public bathrooms. I just hold it in,” she added. “I want to be able to use the bathroom in peace.”
Mudra’s stepmother, Shauna Otterness, said she was “enraged” upon hearing about the incident, which she called “cruel and humiliating.”
“We know Gerika was targeted because of how she looks,” Otterness said. “She didn’t do anything wrong. She just didn’t fit what that server thought a girl should look like. I was shocked and heartbroken by how many people shared similar stories after I posted about it online.”
“This shouldn’t be normal,” Otterness added. “We can do better, and we have to.”
The Minnesota Human Rights Act explicitly forbids discrimination based on gender identity, whether real or perceived. As such, if the employee’s behavior arose from the suspicion that Mudra was trans, the employee’s actions are still potentially illegal. Additionally, the law requires businesses to train staff, enforce anti-discrimination policies, and ensure their spaces are safe and welcoming to everyone, Gender Equity noted.
While Minnesota doesn’t have laws restricting trans people’s restroom use, 19 states do. Republicans nationwide have repeatedly accused trans women of “invading” women’s spaces to harm girls and women. No evidence shows that trans-inclusive restroom policies contribute to a rise in restroom-related assaults.
Gender Justice also noted that nearly one-third of LGBTQ+ people report experiencing harassment for using a bathroom, and nearly 60% of trans people have avoided using public restrooms out of fear of harassment or violence.
“The transphobia that’s happening, it really affects everyone and it’s really bad for everyone because… there’s expectations about what women should look like, what women’s bodies should look like. And if you don’t meet those stereotypes, you’re gonna be targeted,” said Jess Braverman, Gender Justice’s legal director.
Holding one’s bodily waste to avoid restrooms can result in increased urinary tract infections, constipation, the presence of blood in the urine, and even kidney disease, according to the American Medical Association. Exclusionary bathroom policies can also contribute to increased anxiety, depression, and suicidality amongst trans individuals, according to the National Institutes of Health.
“Black girls and women also face relentless policing of their appearance and identity. In schools, they are suspended at six times the rate of white girls, often for subjective reasons tied to how they dress, speak, or wear their hair,” Gender Justice added. “These same biases follow them into places like restaurants and bathrooms where they are often treated as suspicious or out of place for simply being themselves.”
Morgan Peterson, Gender Justice’s executive director, said, “A growing culture of suspicion and control is targeting trans, gender-nonconforming, and Black girls and women—anyone who doesn’t match narrow ideas of how women should look or behave. When people are harassed just for existing, none of us are truly safe.”
Cis women are regularly harassed because of transphobic restroom policies
In January, anti-trans Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) reportedly told a cis woman in a Capitol women’s restroom, “You shouldn’t be here,” before storming back into the restroom with her transphobic colleague, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), only to realize the woman wasn’t trans.
“I made an error regarding a mistaken identity,” Boebert said in a statement after the incident. “I apologized, learned a lesson, and it won’t happen again.”
In November 2022, a cisgender woman harassed another cis woman with short hair in the public restroom of the Rampart Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, because she thought she was transgender.
Air Force veteran Gina Ortiz Jones has become the first out LGBTQ+ person elected as mayor of San Antonio, Texas. After beating conservative Rolando Pablos in a runoff election on Saturday, she will also become the third woman to hold the office.
“It was my name on the ballot,” she told supporters at a victory rally that night, “but you and I know decency was on the ballot, kindness was on the ballot, compassion was on the ballot, and San Antonio showed up and showed out.”
She added, “So I look forward to being a mayor for all.”
The win followed a contentious battle between Jones and Pablos, who is known for his close ties with anti-LGBTQ+ Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R). Jones called Pablos “Abbott’s puppet” and Pablos accused her of using the name Ortiz to appeal to the city’s Latino majority even though she is Filipino-American.
In response, Ortiz called him “racist” and said she’s “proud of my identity.”
“As we think about what’s going on in this moment in time… [we] reminded folks what San Antonio stands for. We reminded them that our city is about compassion and it’s about leading with everybody in mind.”
Jones also brought Brandon, a transgender drill instructor in the United States Air Force, to the stage. She told the crowd he is being kicked out due to the president’s anti-trans executive orders.
“Leadership matters. Leaders do three things: They create opportunities, they protect opportunities, or they erase opportunities… It’s unfortunate that the United States Air Force is not going to benefit from your talents because of bigotry,” she told him.
“Our country, I think we’re going through a blip right now, but San Antonio has had the opportunity to say. you know what, we’re going to move past this.”
Jones ran under the slogan, “There is no time to waste.” A two-time candidate for Congress, Iraq War veteran, Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, and an Under Secretary of the Air Force in the Biden administration, she has certainly done a lot with hers.
She came out to family and friends at 15 and served as an Air Force captain in Iraq under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. “I learned a long time ago, transparency leads to accountability, and accountability leads to trust,” she said.
Jones most recently served as Under Secretary of the Air Force, where she managed a $173 billion budget and led 600,000 people.
“That job came down to asking yourself two questions every single day,” she recently told LGBTQ Nation, “which is 1) Do my folks have what they need to be successful to do the nation’s work? And 2) Are we making smart investments? I think those are ultimately the questions that a mayor has to ask.”
Jones has voiced tackling poverty as a big priority, since almost 20 percent of San Antonio residents live below the poverty line – a number that has held steady since the 1980s.
A first-generation American, Jones grew up in San Antonio, and her mother is from the Philippines. She raised Jones and her sister as a single mother. They lived in subsidized housing and relied on reduced lunch programs.
In a 2020 interview with LGBTQ Nation, Jones emphasized that these programs were not handouts for her family, but rather critical investments in their future.
In the Air Force, she served as an intelligence officer. She has spent almost fifteen years working in national security, including serving as the Director for Investment at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative under President Barack Obama.
“I’ve seen firsthand the importance of American leadership,” she also told LGBTQ Nation. “I know how important our example is in so many ways.” She emphasized “the importance of electing good, competent people that can lead in times of crisis and not cause them or exacerbate them.”
Hockey star Madison Packer played in five All-Star Games and is the second-highest goalscorer in the history of the Premier Hockey Federation, which was the forerunner to the National Women’s Hockey League.
Packer is widely recognized as an icon of women’s sports. Yet not for the first time, Packer recently found herself being misgendered as a result of gender policing she believes is escalating in line with heightened anti-trans rhetoric.
Two weeks ago, the 33-year-old posted an Instagram story to say that in late April she had been “forcibly removed” from a women’s bathroom stall in a Florida nightclub.
Packer, who spent eight seasons with the Metropolitan Riveters in the NWHL and PHF, wrote “sounds familiar” when sharing an article about the incident on social media.
She describes her own experience in Florida as “humiliating” and connects it directly to the ongoing discourse in society that suggests trans people pose a threat in women’s spaces.
“The entire bathroom situation is absurd,” Packer tells Outsports.
“The fear-mongering and outright propaganda we have perpetuated against the trans community in this country is pathetic.”
Packer says she had been with her wife and their friends at the club in Naples, Fla., when she left them to visit the restroom.
“Upon walking in, the female bathroom attendant several times said, ‘Sir sir,’ as to get my attention,” recalled Packer. “I am a cis female. I don’t respond to ‘sir.’”
During her playing days, the former power forward was a vocal leader on and off the ice, partnering with You Can Play on the organization’s LGBTQ advocacy initiatives.
She ignored the attendant and headed into a stall.
It was then that Packer felt the attendant pulling her backwards by the shoulder.
“Again, she addressed me as ‘sir’ and told me I was in the wrong bathroom. We proceeded to argue over the bathroom I was in until I showed her my driver’s license.”
In Florida, trans people are prohibited by law from using public bathrooms and gendered facilities that align with their gender identity in all government-owned buildings, including K-12 schools and colleges.
The law applies only to facilities run by the state, but there have been several reports of trans, nonbinary and gender nonconforming people being challenged when using restrooms inside private businesses.
The Movement Advancement Project lists five other states — Arkansas, Montana, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming — as having passed bathroom bills similar to that of Florida.
For women like Packer, who in her own words is “masculine presenting,” the chances of being confronted in a restroom are by no means limited to certain states.
She says that a few years ago, she was also involved in a physical altercation with a male bouncer in the bathroom of a bar in Connecticut.
It’s natural for her to speak out about the damage done by gender policing. After announcing her retirement from hockey last November, Packer and her wife, Anya Battaglino, started a podcast called “These Packs Puck” in which they discuss queer parenthood and navigating life after pro sports.
On the latest episode, they talk about how being challenged in Florida left Packer “very upset” on what was, by coincidence, Lesbian Visibility Day. The couple had posted to Instagram to mark that awareness day, using an old photo taken in a Palm Springs restroom to make a point.
Anya wrote the caption: “Minding mine. (Wish the government would do the same).”
A little over a week later, Packer shared more details of her confrontation after reading online about what had happened in the Boston hotel.
In its reporting of that incident, CBS News quoted the executive director of PFLAG Greater Boston, Nina Selvaggio, who said: “For gender nonconforming lesbians, women in general, being harassed in public restrooms is a tale as old as time.
“I do think the surge in national anti-trans rhetoric is contributing to an increased policing of women’s bodies and their expression of gender.”
Packer told Outsports she agrees “wholeheartedly” with Selvaggio’s comments.
“I find it infuriating that we’re now going as far as to dictate or try to regulate what ‘female’ looks like.
“I’ve shared locker rooms and bathrooms with straight men, gay men, gay women, straight women, trans men, and trans women… I’ve never once had an altercation or inappropriate exchange with a trans person.
“I think we’re concerning ourselves with the wrong groups when it comes to restroom safety.”
Two teenagers, one a juvenile, brutally beat a 19-year-old woman inside a suburban McDonald’s after making derogatory comments about her sexual orientation, according to local police.
The May 13 incident occurred at the fast food chain’s location in Carpentersville, Illinois, about 40 miles from Chicago, with officers responding to a report of a fight in progress, according to news release from the Carpentersville Police Department.
The victim, who was later identified as Kady Grass, sustained severe injuries and was transported to a local hospital, where she was treated and has since been released.
Following an investigation, the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office approved multiple felony charges against the suspects, according to police. John Kammrad, 19, was charged with aggravated battery, great bodily harm, aggravated battery in a public place, mob action and more. Kammrad was taken into custody on Saturday, while the juvenile suspect turned himself in on Friday.
Photos posted to a GoFundMe account for Grass show the extent of her injuries, which span her face and her legs. In an interview with NBC Chicago, Grass said the attack happened while she was in town to see her 13-year-old cousin’s choir concert.
“One hit me in the jaw and one was hitting me in the front, and then I didn’t realize that I was getting hit behind until a little bit later, like it took me a while to realize,” Grass said. “I was unconscious when they were stomping on my head, so I don’t remember that part, but my 13-year-old cousin does.”
Carpentersville Police Deputy Chief Kevin Stankowitz said the incident “underscores the importance of addressing violence and discrimination” within the community, according to the news release.
In an email to NBC Chicago, Stankowitz said the department collaborated with the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office on whether or not to file hate crime charges. After a review of the case, Stankowitz said, the office declined to file them.
After defending the actions of a security guard who threw a lesbian couple out of a women’s restroom and accused one of them of being a man, a five-star hotel in Boston has suspended the guard and admitted he acted in error.
In addition to sidelining the staff member, the Liberty Hotel on Boston’s Beacon Hill said all staff are being retrained “on inclusive practices and guest interaction protocols.” The hotel is also donating to a local LGBTQ+ organization, WBZ News reports.
“The Liberty Hotel is and always will be an ally of the LGBTQ+ community and a place where everyone is welcome and celebrated,” the hotel said in a statement. “We will continue to educate and train our team to ensure that everyone feels safe and accepted within our four walls, and guests who do not show tolerance and acceptance towards others will be removed.”
The hotel’s statement issued Tuesday was in stark contrast to their initial reaction to the incident on Saturday during a Kentucky Derby viewing party, when the guard stormed into the women’s restroom in the hotel lobby and began banging on stall doors. He accused one of the lesbian partners of being a man.
“All of a sudden there was banging on the door,” said one of the women, Ansley Baker.
“I pulled my shorts up. I hadn’t even tied them. One of the security guards was there telling me to get out of the bathroom, that I was a man in the women’s bathroom. I said, ‘I’m a woman.’”
Baker’s partner, Liz Victor, was waiting by the sinks and heard the commotion.
“I looked down and I saw her shoes, and that’s when I was like, ‘What is going on?”
As Baker was escorted out, the women said, other women in line for the restroom hurled insults at her, calling Baker “a creep” and demanding she be removed. The security guard then demanded to see the women’s IDs to prove their gender.
After a heated exchange, the couple was told to leave the hotel.
In their initial statement issued Monday, the Liberty Hotel accused the two women of sharing one stall.
“An incident occurred at the Liberty Hotel on Saturday, May 3 where several women alerted security of two adults sharing a bathroom stall,” the hotel wrote. “The bathroom was cleared out as two adults in one stall are not permitted. After leaving the bathroom, a member of the couple from the stall put their hands on our security team and it was then that they were removed from the premises.”
“The Liberty Hotel has a zero-tolerance policy for any physical altercations on our property,” the hotel continued. “The safety of our guests and staff is our priority, and this event is under investigation.”
With the investigation complete, the hotel has changed its story.
The couple vehemently denied being in the same stall.
“If that’s what he thought the issue was once he opened the stall door, obviously there was only one person in there, so it should’ve been case closed,” Victor said. “Let her tie up her shorts and go about her day.”
The couple said they went public hoping to make a difference for others experiencing the same kind of treatment.
“We know we’re not the only ones that face this kind of thing and just hope it doesn’t happen again and that other people who go through this receive the same support,” said Baker.
Victor added, “It was a very scary situation, but trans women experience this every single day in the U.S. and across the world.”
Since 2016, Massachusetts state law has allowedall people to use restrooms and locker rooms that are most aligned with their gender identity.
The number of Americans identifying as LGBTQ+ continued to rise, according to the latest Gallup poll.
In 2024, 9.3% of U.S. adults identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or something other than heterosexual.
That’s an increase of more than one point since a 2023 survey, double the number from 2020, and up from 3.5% when Gallup first asked about sexual identity in 2012.
14,000 respondents in a phone survey were asked, “Which of the following do you consider yourself to be? You can select as many as apply. Straight or heterosexual; Lesbian; Gay; Bisexual; Transgender.”
Overall, 85.7% say they are straight, 5.2% are bisexual, 2.0% are gay, 1.4% are lesbian, and 1.3% are transgender. Just under 1% mention another LGBTQ+ identity, such as pansexual, asexual, or queer. Five percent of respondents declined to answer the question.
The survey found LGBTQ+ identification is increasing as younger generations of Americans enter adulthood. Younger people are much more likely than older generations to say they are something other than heterosexual.
Both Gen Z and millennials came of age with the expansion of LGBTQ+ rights, marriage equality, and greater representation in the culture.
More than one in five Gen Z adults — those born between 1997 and 2006, who were between the ages of 18 and 27 in 2024 — identify as LGBTQ+. Each older generation of adults, from millennials to the Silent Generation, has successively lower rates of identification, down to 1.8% among the oldest Americans, those born before 1946.
The largest increase was among younger people identifying as bisexual. 59% of LGBTQ+ Gen Z Americans (ages 18-27) called themselves bisexual, along with more than half (52%) of LGBTQ+ millennials (ages 28-43).
Among the nearly 900 LGBTQ+ individuals Gallup interviewed last year, more than half, 56%, said they were bisexual. Twenty-one percent said they were gay, 15% lesbian, 14% transgender, and 6% something else. These figures total more than 100% because the survey allows respondents to report multiple LGBTQ+ identities.
The overall estimate of 9.3% of U.S. adults who identify as LGBTQ+ counts each respondent only once, even if they have multiple identities.
The survey broke down LGBTQ+ identification associated with sex, politics, and geography, as well.
Democrats (14%) and independents (11%) are far more likely than Republicans (3%) to identify as LGBTQ+.
21% of liberals, compared with 8% of moderates and 3% of conservatives, say they are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.
LGBTQ+ identification is higher among people living in cities (11%) and suburbs (10%) than in rural areas (7%).
College graduates (9%) and nongraduates (10%) are about equally likely to identify as LGBTQ+, while 10% of women versus 6% of men say they are LGBTQ+. That gender gap is most pronounced in younger generations.
31% of Gen Z women versus 12% of Gen Z men identify as LGBTQ+, with most of those younger women saying they are bisexual.
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