Photo by Sara D. Davis/Getty Images
D.C. Police arrested a security guard yesterday at a Giant Grocery store after she assaulted a woman. Ebony Belcher, a transgender woman, told NBC4 that the incident occurred when she was trying to use the women’s restroom at the store at H and 3rd Streets NE.
“She opened the door and came in and started calling me derogatory names,” Belcher said to NBC, who called the police to file a report. She also said guard also told her, “You guys cannot keep coming in here and using our women’s restroom. They did not pass the law yet,” Belcher continued.
D.C. does not have a law like the one passed in North Carolina in March, which requires that people use the bathroom that corresponds with the gender on their birth certificate. Mayor Muriel Bowser banned travel to the Tarheel State over the law, HB2, and the Justice Department is suing the state. Attorney General Loretta Lynch called HB2 “state-sponsored discrimination against transgender individuals.”
Despite national convo on bathrooms & #trans ppl, #DC law is clear: #Trans ppl can always use bathroom that fits their gender identity.
— DCOfficeHumanRights (@DCHumanRights) May 19, 2016
Police viewed video footage, which showed that “the special police officer forcibly removed the complainant from the store,” Dustin Sternbeck of MPD told DCist. The security guard, who works for a company hired by Giant, is being charged with simple assault.
