As I keep repeating these bathroom bills hurt cis women because it is based solely on how someone looks to some other people. If as in this case a cis woman did not look feminine enough for the server and so this woman was forced to show her breasts. How is that feminism work going TERF people. These bathroom bills and the hype of fake false stories of danger to women only make all women less safe. See now people that look like men legally might have to use a female’s bathroom, so all a cis man has to say is he is trans and they can legally be in the woman’s bathroom. Same for any female that wants to go into the men’s room only needs to claim to be a trams women. All due to hate and bigotry making a problem where none existed. Think of it, the only assaults I have heard about in female restrooms is from cis people attacking cis females because they think they are trans. Hugs
The 18-year-old high school student said she unzipped her hoodie to show she had breasts after a Buffalo Wild Wings server didn’t believe she is a woman.
A Minnesota teenager filed a charge of discrimination against a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant Tuesday, alleging a server followed her into the women’s restroom and demanded she “prove” she was a girl.
Gerika Mudra, 18, went to dinner in April with a friend in Owatonna, about an hour south of Minneapolis. When she went to the restroom, a server followed her inside and banged on the stall door while saying: “This is a women’s restroom. The man needs to get out of here,” according to Gender Justice, a Minnesota gender-equality organization that filed the charge on Mudra’s behalf.
Gerika Mudra, 18, says she was harassed by a server who accused her of being a boy in the girls’ bathroom.Gender Justice
Mudra, a biracial lesbian who isn’t transgender, said that she has been in similar situations before, when people have suggested she’s in the wrong restroom, but that when she tells them she’s a woman they leave her alone. However, when she came out of the stall at Buffalo Wild Wings and told the server, “I am a lady,” she said, the server responded, “You have to get out now,” Gender Justice said in a statement.
Mudra said she felt she had to prove to the server that she is a woman, so she unzipped her hoodie to show she has breasts. The server didn’t say anything in response but left the restroom, Mudra said.
“She made me feel very uncomfortable,” Mudra said. “After that, I just don’t like going in public bathrooms. I just hold it in. … I want to be able to use the bathroom in peace.”
Inspire Brands, which represents Buffalo Wild Wings, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Buffalo Wild Wings in Owatonna, Minn.Google Maps
Gender Justice filed the charge of discrimination with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, arguing that what happened to Mudra violates the state’s Human Rights Act, which protects people from discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, among other protected statuses.
Sara Jane Baldwin, senior staff attorney at Gender Justice, said at a news conference Tuesday that even though Mudra isn’t trans, the server’s actions “were based on assumptions that she made about” Mudra, and that Minnesota’s law protects against discrimination based on stereotypes or assumptions about protected characteristics like gender identity.
“Businesses have a legal obligation not to just have antidiscrimination policies on paper, but to train staff and ensure that those policies are followed in real time,” Baldwin said. “When that doesn’t happen, the business is liable for the harm caused.”
Gender Justice said Mudra’s experience “reflects a broader climate of fear and suspicion aimed at anyone who doesn’t conform to narrow expectations of what girls and women ‘should’ look like.” That suspicion has been driven largely by the wave of state legislation targeting trans people, particularly their access to school sports and bathrooms that align with their gender identities, though Minnesota hasn’t enacted any such legislation.
Nineteen states have laws that prohibit trans people from using bathrooms that align with their gender identities in K-12 schools, and in many of those states the restrictions apply to other government-owned buildings, as well, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank. Twenty-seven states prohibit trans people from playing on school sports teams that align with their gender identities.
“This kind of gender policing is, unfortunately, nothing new,” Megan Peterson, executive director at Gender Justice, said in a statement. “And yet, in our current climate we have to ask: What if Gerika had been a trans person? Would this story have ended differently? That’s the terrifying reality too many trans people live with every day.”
Even if Mudra had been trans, she would be able to file a discrimination complaint under state law in Minnesota, which is one of 21 states and Washington, D.C., that explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in public accommodations, according to the Movement Advancement Project. Two states explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation only, and six additional states interpret existing measures against discrimination based on sex to also include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Twenty-one states don’t have explicit protections from discrimination based on gender identity in public accommodations.
This week, as I noted last night when I wrote to you, a lot was going on. Really, too much, which seems to be a definite feature and not a bug of this second Trump administration. They don’t want us to be able to take in everything that’s going on. So I’m starting a Sunday morning wrap-up feature to help you keep up with anything you may have missed during the week.
I’m going to cheat by a day and start with the column from Saturday, August 2nd, It’s 1984, which is the perfect lead in for starting the conversation about our Book Club book, George Orwell’s 1984, now that we’ve had some time to start reading. If you haven’t started, we’ll have a Substack Live discussion about it later this week, so now is a great time to get started. In the column, following Trump’s firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner Ericka McEntarfer because he didn’t like the jobs numbers, I wrote, “In the novel 1984, facts are not a barrier. Rewriting history is a central tenet of the totalitarian regime, carried out by the Ministry of Truth.” We need to take note as this becomes a feature of the Trump administration. We live in a post-truth society now.
In The Week Ahead last Sunday, we kicked off a conversation about the Voting Rights Act, which had its 60th anniversary last week. The irony of the Supreme Court’s announcement late on the Friday night ahead of that anniversary, that it would hear a case with an issue designed to gut much of what remains of it, was far too measured to be coincidence. Here’s your essential refresher on the Act, and the way the Supreme Court has eroded it. Most importantly, this is not hopeless! Electing majorities in the Senate and the House at the midterms would almost certainly make restoring the Act, which the Supreme Court invited Congress to do, a top priority. We took that issue up in conversations later in the week, which you’ll want to see if you missed them during the week.
On Monday, Marc Elias and I discussed the Voting Rights Act. There is no sugar coating here, but realism about where we are, and also what the path forward could look like if we don’t give up.
There’s no nice way to put it. I’m heartsick about what’s happening at DOJ and the FBI. Discussed in this post, Desecrating DOJ. Pam Bondi is proving to be exactly the Attorney General we expected—someone with loyalty to Donald Trump instead of to the Constitution. But even here, there are guardrails—even if DOJ tries to indict its revenge cases, grand juries may refuse to go along. If they indict, trial judges and juries must be persuaded of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Make sure you read this piece to the end, because part of Trump’s shtick is persuading people to give up because he’s already won, already taken the system apart, and he has not. There is still some play in the joints, and every reason for us to persist.
We had no chicken pictures this week, but the Turkeys that were roaming around in the woods while I finished proofreading my book were pretty engaging. I appreciated all the people who wrote to tell me this was a pack of males roaming around in the pre-mating season. The things you can learn here at Civil Discourse!
If you missed my conversation with Alabama Congressman Shomari Figures, do yourself a favor and go listen now. Shomari was elected out of Alabama 2, the new district created last term after the Supreme Court ruled Alabama’s legislature engaged in racial discrimination when it drew new maps after the decennial census and ordered them redrawn. I’m a little biased here, Shomari was my Obama-era colleague working on criminal justice reform and other issues, and his parents are civil rights icons in Alabama, but he makes you feel proud to be a Democrat. This is a conversation filled with hope but tempered with realism. Shomari is part of the new generation of leaders we need.
This week’s Five Questions column featured Maine’s Secretary of State (and gubernatorial candidate) Shenna Bellows, who recently told the administration to “Go Jump in the Gulf of Maine,” when it asked her to give them information on Maine’s voters. This is someone who knows what it takes to run an election, but in addition to being smart, she also reminds us that elections are about us and about grassroots American patriotism. We’ll follow up with a Substack Live with her soon.
Finally, last night’s, A Tough Week for the Rule of Law, catches us up on more of the difficult legal news from last week. “In order to resist what Trump is doing in our country, you need to be informed; you need to know what’s at stake.” It can be awfully tempting to look away right now, but don’t. This is our generation’s fight for democracy, and this week confirmed my sense that I landed on the right title for my book, when I called it “Giving Up is Unforgivable.” Get mad. Get angry. Feel the sadness of the moment. But don’t give up.
I hope you’ll use the week’s posts to stay up to speed and that you’ll share them widely—it’s going to take every last one of us to reset guardrails in Congress in the 2026 election. There will be nothing more important, and the time to start educating people around you is now. Thanks for being here with me at Civil Discourse, as we take on the challenges ahead!
Scottie's Playtime 