The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sued a private business for sex discrimination and harassment after a male employee — who announced he was switching genders to become a woman — was barred from using the women’s restroom and was referred to with male pronouns by his coworkers.
Deluxe Financial Services, a Minnesota-based company that helps small businesses with marketing, denied that it violated any anti-discrimination laws but agreed to settle the case for $115,000 in order to avoid further costs of litigation, according to the settlement agreement.
The male employee, who now goes by the name Britney Austin, publicly presented himself as male when he was hired by Deluxe Financial but later opted to begin identifying as a woman.
According to a press release from last summer — when the EEOC filed the lawsuit — Austin’s coworkers subjected him to a “hostile work environment,” such as “intentionally using the wrong gender pronouns to refer to [him].”
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