The ruling lifts a stay ordered by the appellate court in 2019, and enforcement of its order now moves back to the Illinois Department of Human Rights, which originally denied Sommerville’s claim in 2012, then reversed itself. The justices also denied Hobby Lobby’s attempt to avoid paying $220,000 in damages awarded by the Human Rights Commission, and opened the door to more: “We remand this case to the Commission for a determination of any additional damages and attorney fees that may be due.” What’s Next? So, I walk back to my shop at the back of the store and wait until I have another opportunity, and then go back up and hopefully somebody is not there.” All the bathrooms are at the front of the store. What if somebody else is using it? “I wait, but I don't want to feel like a creeper and be waiting outside the bathroom. “Every time you go to the bathroom, sometimes it's four or five times a day, I have to use the unisex bathroom,” she said. She developed a medical condition, fibromyalgia, which impacts her thyroid and results in a more frequent need to empty her bladder. Sommerville explained what it’s been like since she was first written up for using the ladies room in February 2011. The presence of a transgender person in a bathroom poses no greater inherent risk to privacy or safety than that posed by anyone else who uses the bathroom.” There is simply no evidence that Sommerville’s use of the women’s bathroom would pose a safety risk to other women. “The final argument raised by Hobby Lobby regarding its bathroom ban-that it was necessary to protect other women from Sommerville-lacks support in either the record or logic.
Hobby Lobby’s provision of a unisex bathroom available to all employees and customers cannot cure its unequal treatment of Sommerville with respect to the women’s bathroom.” “The existence of the unisex bathroom is irrelevant to the main issue in this case, which is whether Hobby Lobby violated Sommerville’s civil rights in denying her, but not other women, access to the women’s bathroom.Hobby Lobby’s unlawful discrimination was not designating bathrooms by sex, but denying Sommerville access to the bathroom that matched her sex.” “Hobby Lobby argues that it was simply acting as a reasonable employer and enforcing its rules about separate bathrooms by keeping a male out of the women’s bathroom, but Hobby Lobby itself recognizes that Sommerville is female.“The only reason that Sommerville is barred from using the women’s bathroom is that she is a transgender woman, unlike the other women (at least, as far as Hobby Lobby knows).”.Jorgensen-three white, cisgender, heterosexual, conservative women in their 60s and 70s. Here are the four key findings by Appellate Court Justice Mary Seminara-Schostok, who was joined unanimously by fellow Appellate Court Justices Kathryn E. The appellate court rejected all of these claims Hobby Lobby made in its argument for the so-called right to discriminate against Sommerville.
The company also argued that she could use the ladies room if she underwent gender affirming surgery and if she changed her birth certificate Lawyers for Hobby Lobby claimed that by blocking her access to the ladies room, the store was protecting women. In its arguments, Hobby Lobby unsuccessfully claimed Sommerville, who came out to family in 2009 and transitioned at work in 2010, could simply use the unisex bathroom it installed in 2013. In July 2021, a federal judge blocked Tennessee from enforcing a law requiring businesses to post a signs, warning customers that transgender patrons may use the bathrooms matching their gender identity. It was built around the slogan: “No Men in Women’s Bathrooms.” A repeal that didn’t remedy all of the contentious issues was enacted the following year.Īs The Atlantic reported, an anti-discrimination ordinance in Houston, Texas was soundly defeated in 2015 mostly because of a successful fear-mongering campaign, perpetuating the myth that allowing trans women into ladies rooms would put cisgender women and girls at risk of male predators. North Carolina’s infamous HB2 law, which restricted the use of public bathrooms to the sex on birth certificates, flushed away $600 million in lost revenue in 2016, resulting from boycotts of state businesses and events. Efforts to prevent transgender people from using public bathrooms that match their gender identity are nothing new, of course.