WASHINGTON -- A DC restaurant asked a woman to show her ID in order to use the bathroom on Friday night – and then expelled her from the restaurant when she refused.
Charlotte Clymer, a writer at the Human Rights Campaign, was celebrating a happy occasion with her friends on Friday night – according to her Twitter, it was her friend’s bachelorette party at Cuba Libre DC.
However, when Clymer, who is transgender, went to use the women’s room, an attendant at the restaurant stopped her.
“An attendant stuck out his arm and said he needed to see my ID. When I asked why, he said that ‘female’ must be on an ID to use the women's restroom. No one else was asked,” Clymer wrote on her Twitter.
Clymer refused and used the restroom anyway, but said not only did the attendant search the “busy” restroom for her, but when she came out of the bathroom, the manager was also there waiting for her.
“[The manager] says it's D.C. law that you must have ‘female’ on your ID to use the women's restroom. I tell him he's wrong and there's no chance I'm showing him my ID,” Clymer said.
Clymer says she brought up what the actual D.C. law was regarding bathrooms. According to D.C. law, public establishments must respect an individual’s choice of restroom based on their gender identification and single-stall restrooms must be gender neutral.
Clymer says the manager went on to threaten to call the police, mock her workplace, and tell her to leave. Then a bouncer forcibly removed her from the restaurant.
“I stood there at the curb with a friend, feeling shattered. I wanted to cry, but my adrenaline was so high at that point that I felt blocked up," she described the humiliation and pain she felt on Twitter.
As other patrons offered their help, Clymer contacted DC police who were “professional” and “affirming,” and plans to use her police report to initiate an investigation into Cuba Libre with the D.C. Office of Human Rights.
Since posting to Twitter, Clymer’s thread has gone viral and has garnered attention and responses from notable people, such as Sarah McBride and Chelsea Clinton.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser also took to Twitter to respond, calling the actions of the restaurant "illegal."
Since the incident, Cuba Libre Restaurant has issued a public apology to Clymer. According to their statement, they “support safe bathrooms” and will be retraining staff. They asked Clymer to reach out to them.
Clymer didn’t appear to accept their apology on Twitter, writing in another thread, “Your manager did not attempt to make amends last night. If he had walked over and given an apology after the police confirmed for him our city's laws, maybe we'd be okay…This is a person who is quite comfortable in his bigotry, and he is not sorry.”
D.C. law not only requires establishments to allow individuals to use whichever restroom they’d like, but also requires management to clearly post these rules to employees.
Since Clymer’s last interaction with Cuba Libre DC about their apology, no additional statements have been come out.
“In D.C., a city celebrated for its LGBTQ culture, inclusivity, and protections, it stunned me that a business could so openly discriminate against transgender people,” Clymer said.
She also included a way to support transgender people of color in DC in her thread:
