Casa Ruby employees decided that every Tuesday and Friday this summer, they’d take the transgender youth from their summer program to a public pool.

Banneker Pool. (Photo courtesy of DPR)

“We just wanted to have fun,” says Lovely Hicks, a youth program coordinator at the LGBTQ non-profit. “Half of them had never been to the swimming pool as women, so it meant a lot to them.”

But following the events of their inaugural visit to Banneker Pool last Friday, Hicks says that those plans have changed.

Accounts from Casa Ruby employees and representatives of D.C. Parks and Recreation vary, but there’s one thing that everyone agrees on: when the Casa Ruby crew arrived at Banneker and asked where the bathroom was, a Summer Youth Employment Program worker employed at the pool through DPR directed them all to the men’s bathroom.

The group asked where the women’s bathroom was, and the youth employee told them that it “doesn’t matter where women’s room is, you are men and should use the men’s bathroom,” according to Nona Conner, a transgender ambassador and mentor at Casa Ruby, and Jocque O’Neal, a volunteer with the organization and Hicks’ boyfriend. They say that the employee told them it was “the law” for the entire group to use the men’s bathroom.

“I submitted my ID and everything to get in, and it clearly says that I am a woman,” says Christ-An Winston, one of the participants in Casa Ruby’s youth program.

D.C. has had a law on the books for more than a decade that allows people to use the bathroom that fits their gender identity. However, the passage of recent law in North Carolina, which requires that people use the bathroom that corresponds with the gender on their birth certificate, has contributed to confusion in D.C., including at least one instance where a security guard was charged with assault for forcibly removing a transgender woman from a women’s bathroom.

DPR acknowledges that the pool staffer misgendered the Casa Ruby group. “A summer youth employee mistakenly misdirected patrons to the restroom,” says spokesperson Gwendolyn Crump.

While Conner says it happens a lot, “it’s offensive and it hurts deeply to be misgendered.” She and the others “wanted to avoid confrontation,” so they moved on and began swimming in the pool. “That wasn’t going to rain on our parade.”

Jacques O’Neal and Lovely Hicks, volunteer and employee of Casa Ruby. (Photo courtesy of Jacque O’Neal)

But less than an hour later, it began to rain. The folks from Casa Ruby headed into the recreation center for shelter, where they say pool staffers began to openly mock them.

“The female staffer [who misgendered the group] and other lifeguards were in a back room but you could see directly inside,” says Conner, with Casa Ruby. “They were laughing, joking, making indirect comments, calling us pedophiles and perverts.”

Hicks says that “they started to call transgender youth men and were taunting them. The way staff were handling it made the youth think, ‘Is it wrong to be who we are? Why do we always have to be the center of the laughter?'”

Winston says that “the supervisors did not correct it at all. The Youth Program and regular DPR staff there were wearing different uniforms, so I know which was which, and they were both disrespecting us.”

Conner and Hicks tried to speak to Banneker supervisors about the treatment. While they were upstairs, O’Neal tried to take a picture of the pool staffers in the room, who allegedly cut the lights. He says that they were “making threats to our [Casa Ruby] youth. Our youth were ready to defend themselves. I told them not to indulge, but the staffers at Banneker were antagonizing the Casa Ruby youth.”

Hicks adds that the pool staffer who originally misgendered them “picked up scissors and pointed them towards us like she was going to do something to us.”

Crump declined to make Banneker staffers available to share their side of the story.

The Casa Ruby group left, and DPR called D.C. Police to report threats. “MPD is investigating a report that the patrons threatened the youth [staffers],” Crump says.

According to an MPD report, “the complainant was sitting in the pool area and two suspects began taking pictures, exhibiting aggressive behavior. A verbal altercation ensued between the complainant and suspects and a witness attempted to intervene. The complainant and witness both believed statements made by the two suspects were threats to do bodily harm. The two suspects had left the scene prior to MPD arrival.”

The Casa Ruby folks say the report is bogus. “It’s clear that we didn’t come to a pool to get into an argument with some lifeguards,” says Conner. “That wasn’t the objective of the day. We wanted to have fun in the pool.”

Conner and Hicks are calling for gender sensitivity training throughout DPR to avoid future misgendering of patrons.

Crump says the agency is investigating the incident, and declined to comment further about next steps or the status of involved staffers.

Conner is helping lead a support group for transgender women of color on Thursday at the Petworth Library to “learn about the resources available to you for reporting harassment and discrimination.”

“Now that we have the law on our side we have to utilize it,” says Conner. “We are a creation of God just like you and deserve to be respected. We just want to be treated fairly like everyone else.”