Transgender woman sues Hooters for discrimination, says workers denied her a job and harassed her

A transgender woman has a filed a lawsuit against a Hooters location in New York, claiming that workers denied her job application based on her appearance and harassed her for using the bathroom.

Brandy Livingston filed the claim with the New York State Division of Human Rights, which has since found there is sufficient evidence her rights may have been violated under the state's anti-discrimination laws and called a hearing. She told local outlet NEWS10 that she's "suing Hooters for sex-based discrimination, on the basis of accommodation and on the basis of employment."

Livingston said that she had been a regular at the restaurant, and hoped to work there after her transition. However, she claimed that when she came out as a trans woman, the employees and management began misgendering and disrespecting her.

“They would use male pronouns. They would refer to me as he,” Livingston said, elaborating on an example where she "overheard one of the servers after I left the restroom talking to one of the managers [who] said, ‘Why are you allowing him in the women’s restroom?’ And the manager said, ‘Oh, I don’t like it any more than you do.'"

Livingston said that when she brought in her job application she was rejected outright, and that the manager would not look at her resume or hear her work experience, instead referencing the company's "image."

“I said, 'Do you want to see my experience or anything?' Because I had previous jobs I had written down," she explained. "And he said, 'Oh, we don’t care about experience. We hire on the basis of personality. And there’s an image that needs to be met.'”

Lawyers for Hooters told the outlet that Livingston has been asked not to return to the location because of her own behavior, which made servers uncomfortable, including allegedly telling them she wanted marry them and discussing masturbation. Livingston claimed that she "I never said anything about [that]."

Hooters also claimed that Livingston had threatened to go to a gun range "for practice" for the next time she came to the restaurant, which Livingston said was "misunderstood" and taken out of context.

“My mom would take me to the gun range and for clay pigeon shooting," she said. "I feel like one of the servers might have overheard what me and my dad were talking about and misunderstood what we were talking about."

Ultimately, Livingston said the lawsuit isn't about the money. “What I really want is an apology," she said, but "I’m never going to get that."