Transgender Woman Sues Walmart, Manager She Says Harassed And Then Fired Her | ThinkProgress

Walmart and one of its managers in a New Jersey store have been hit with a lawsuit alleging that a transgender employee was harassed and then fired over her gender identity.

Samantha Azzarano began working at Walmart store in Deptford, New Jersey as a service associate in September of 2012. In January of the next year, she informed a manager that she is transgender. Later that year, she began outwardly expressing her gender identity and had her name badge changed to Samantha. The lawsuit says that there were no problems with her coworkers or performance.

That is, until another manager, Sheena Wyckoff, joined Azzarano’s team in January of 2014. “That’s when the trouble began,” Azzarano’s lawyer, Kevin M. Costello, told ThinkProgress.
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She’s right that she should be protected from workplace discrimination as a transgender woman. Thanks to a provision in New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination that stipulates protections based on gender identity and expression, hers is one of just 19 states and Washington D.C. where transgender people are explicitly covered by anti-discrimination laws. Federal law doesn’t enumerate protections for gender identity in the workplace, although the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has ruled that it violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bans sex-based discrimination.

Transgender Woman Sues Walmart, Manager She Says Harassed And Then Fired Her | ThinkProgress