A Hooters restaurant in upstate Colonie, New York, has found itself at the wrong end of a discrimination lawsuit filed by a transgender person who claims the restaurant will not hire him because of transitioning to a woman.
According to reports, Brandy Livingston had been a long-time customer of the location, and after “transitioning” into a “woman,” he also wanted to become an employee there. However, the restaurant refused to hire Livingston who is now suing them, WTEN-TV reported.
Worse, Livingston adds, employees have become abusive, and have even “misgendered” him since the transition.
“They would use male pronouns. They would refer to me as he,” Livingston told the station.
Livingston also said that the staff of the establishment harassed him when using the women’s restroom.
“I overheard one of the servers after I left the restroom talking to one of the managers and said that, ‘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 claimed.
Livingston also insists that he was denied employment despite three attempts to fill out a job application.
“I said, do you want to see my experience or anything? Because I had previous jobs I had written down. 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,'” Livingston said of one encounter with a restaurant manager.
The perceived treatment led Livingston to file a claim with the New York State Division of Human Rights, which later agreed that there may be a case and scheduled a hearing on the accusations. The hearing, though, is set for next September, so it will be some time before there is any resolution to the matter.
There is another side to this story, though. WTEN spoke to the restaurant’s management, and they said Livingston was a problematic customer in the past and often made servers feel uncomfortable. Employees reported that Livingston talked to them of masturbation and even asked the women if they would marry him. In another case, they said he loudly talked about going to a gun range for the “next time” he was coming to the restaurant.
Of the latter claim, Livingston told the reporter, “My mom would take me to the gun range and for clay pigeon shooting, trap. 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.”
Another, similar lawsuit was recently filed in Virginia after a transgender person allegedly employed subterfuge to get hired by Liberty University, a private Christian college in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Ellenor Zinski, who began his transition to a “woman” in 2023, applied for a job in the school’s IT department four months after beginning hormone treatments to transition. University officials say Zinski did not inform his prospective employer that he was engaging in the medical procedures. Then, after being hired and after a 90-day probation period, Zinski revealed he wanted to be addressed as a woman and had transitioned.
He also demanded that the university depart from its condemnation of transgenderism and allow him to remain employed at the school.
The university, though, did not feel disposed to accept Zinski’s demands and fired him, prompting Zinski to file a lawsuit for discrimination. The religious institution has rules against transgender employees because they feel transgenderism goes against their religious doctrines and mission.
The school also feels that Zinski engaged in deceptive practices and set them up for a lawsuit.
“All of this was done to set Liberty [University] up and attempt to make an example out of the university for standing its ground,” said Mat Staver, the chairman of Liberty Counsel, the legal organization helping the university with the case, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
Zinski’s lawyer, though, claims that it is simply discrimination and that his client’s “intention was to be a highly successful employee for Liberty who continued to meet all of her obligations.”
“I was really hoping they would work with me … that I could be myself,” Zinski told the AP. “I was hoping I could advocate for queer people. We need Jesus just as much as anyone else does.”
Zinski is seeking $300,000 in damages.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, or Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston.
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