Transgender Vet Sues Barber Who Refused to Provide Haircut
Kendall Oliver, a transgender individual who was denied a haircut in March by a California barber who cited religious scripture as his reasoning, has officially filed a lawsuit against the barbershop for discrimination.
“All Kendall wanted was a short haircut like any other paying customer,” writes attorney Peter Renn of Lambda Legal in a statement. The LGBT-rights organization is representing Oliver, along with private law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson. “Kendall’s sex shouldn’t have mattered. California’s civil rights laws give all of us the right to be served by businesses no matter what our sex, race, or religion. A business has no right to impose its gender stereotypes on its customers, and trying to justify those beliefs with religion does not excuse unlawful discrimination. The fact that discrimination may be religiously motivated doesn’t make it any less harmful to the person on its receiving end.”
Related: Woman Harassed in Bathroom for Appearing Transgender — and She’s Not Alone
This is the second gender-discrimination lawsuit to be filed against a barbershop since March. That’s when Rose Trevis, who identifies as male, sued Hawyleywood’s Barber Shop in Long Beach, Calif., after he was refused service with a simple, “We don’t cut women’s hair.”
Both situations appear to be clear violations of California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, which explicitly outlaws businesses from discriminating based on sex as well as gender identity. Examples of potential violations of the law include “establishing a ‘women only’ or ‘men only’ business establishment which would otherwise be completely open to the public” and covers businesses including bars, theaters, retail shops, hotels, hospitals, and “barber shops and beauty salons.” The law is at the heart of both suits.
Related: The Complex Relationship Between Transgender Women and Makeup
Also worth noting is that in cases like this one, the discrimination is two-pronged. “For one thing, the California civil rights law prohibits businesses from discriminating based on sex — there’s no question at all that keeping women out of barbershops is against the law — so that’s one half of this,” Ilona Turner, legal director of the Transgender Law Center in Oakland told Yahoo Beauty regarding the Trevis case when it was filed. “The law also prohibits discrimination based on gender identity and says an individual must be treated in accordance with their gender identity.”
Oliver, an Army reserve sergeant who served in Afghanistan, was born female but identifies as being “more male than female,” and prefers to use gender-neutral pronouns “they,” “them,” and “their” instead of “him” or “her.” The plaintiff had recently moved to California from Colorado on the day of the alleged discriminatory incident in March. That’s when Oliver went into The Barbershop in Rancho Cucamonga for an appointment. But when barber Richard Hernandez perceived Oliver to be female, he said that he did not cut women’s hair and therefore could not carry out the haircut. Oliver later called the barbershop to explain a gender identity that was “more male than female,” but Hernandez still refused to provide his services.
Hernandez later said to reporters, “God teaches a very clear distinction between the genders,” that people should not “go against what God has created” and that “it’s a shame for a man to have long hair, but if a woman has long hair, it’s her glory.”
As Oliver noted in the Lambda Legal press release, “I was hurt and humiliated to be unable to get something as basic as a haircut, based on assumptions about who I am and expectations about who I should be. When you go for a haircut, you don’t expect your barber to police your gender. A business may think I’m going against God’s will by having short hair, but that doesn’t give it the right to act on that belief and to deny me the same service that it provides to others.”
The fact that Oliver’s gender identity may not be clear-cut or fall neatly within a male-female binary may be confusing to some, but that’s beside the point in this case, Renn tells Yahoo Beauty. “It is the case that Kendall doesn’t identify on the binary, and there are plenty of people in the same boat, as choosing one doesn’t capture who they are,” he explains. “Kendall simply said, ‘I’m here for a haircut,’ and the owner said no without any information beyond looking at Kendall. That would be harmful even if he had accurately perceived [a non-transgender woman’s] gender, in other words if Kendall were not transgender. But it’s incredibly demeaning to be told you are not what feels correct to you on the inside. So I think this case captures the different layers of harm.”
The bottom line? “Some people may not understand Kendall’s gender identity, but there’s no confusion about the fact that Kendall was discriminated against on the basis of sex,” Renn says, “no matter how you slice it.”
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