It’s no surprise that in our nation’s capital, unelected regulators are trying to induce a “gender” free-for-all in the public restrooms, without actually having the law on their side.
The Daily Caller reports that a Washington, D.C. grocery store security guard was arrested Monday, for escorting a man who identifies as a transgender woman out of the ladies’ room.
The security guard, a woman, saw Ebony Belcher go into the bathroom:
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The shopper — a young, African-American [transgender] male who identified himself as Ebony Belcher to local news outlets — reportedly passed the security guard on his way into the women’s restroom at a Giant grocery store in Northeast D.C.
After seeing Belcher walk into the women’s restroom, the security guard followed him in and ordered the man to leave. When he refused, the security guard had to physically escort him out of the women’s restroom.
The guard, who has not been named, was arrested on an assault charge for physically removing Belcher.
Daily Caller reports that the D.C. police confirm they are treating the incident as a “suspected hate crime.”
According to the transgender individual:
Belcher told NBC4 that the security guard told him: “You guys cannot keep coming in here and using our women’s restroom. They did not pass the law yet.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEFEosQimro
D.C. “law” is legitimately confusing on the matter. Indeed, they haven’t “passed a law yet.” The District of Columbia has instead a 2006 regulation from its Office of Civil Rights that says single-occupancy restrooms cannot be labeled as “gender specific.” Although there doesn’t appear to be any actual regulation covering multi-occupancy restrooms with stalls, the OCR seems to interpret its regulation as applying to multi-occupancy facilities as well.
This vague, untested interpretation of a regulation is not the same thing as having a law passed by the D.C. city council. The latter would be a basis for certainty by the police and courts about who must be admitted to public restrooms. But the regulation actually addresses only restroom labeling.
Which is no doubt why the D.C. Office of Civil Rights campaign on bathrooms is about harassing businesses over their labeling compliance.
The D.C. approach to shoveling men into women’s restrooms is an oblique one, focused on labeling and allowing ambiguous situations like the one in the grocery store to develop. That way, lawsuit-wary businesses end up making de facto changes to the bathroom policy in the city, without the city having to actually, literally change its law.
If the “hate crime” charge is brought, the security guard probably has the basis for a lawsuit against the city. It wouldn’t surprise me if the “hate crime” goes away. If a competent lawyer takes on the security guard’s case, the whole thing could go away – even in the District of Columbia, where “law” is now just an opening bid in a perpetual extortion racket.
