“Intersexed” Employee’s Claim of a Series of Harassing Incidents is not Time-Barred
After being subjected to anonymous threats and verbal abuse, a Home Depot employee who described herself as “intersexed” or a “partial hermaphrodite” submitted sufficient evidence to defeat the home improvement store’s summary judgment motion on her hostile work environment sexual harassment claim, according to the federal court in New Jersey. In this case, the employee testified that she was born with male sex organs but also with a large amount of female hormones. The employee lived as a male until she was 14 years old, when she changed her name from Ronald to Ashley. She was hired by Home Depot in 2006 and soon began hearing “whispers and rumors” around the store that she was a man and that male customers were making obscene comments toward her. The employee complained to a human resources manager, who investigated and prepared a report indicating that the store manager was not cooperative, that despite her direction, he was not taking the HR manager’s advice to stop the badgering seriously—a particular concern because other employees would emulate the store manager’s actions. That same year the store manager questioned the employee’s use of the women’s’ rest room when a female customer expressed discomfort with being in the rest room with “it” apparently referring to the employee’s transsexuality. The HR manager advised the store manager that it was appropriate for the employee to use the women’s rest room and that the store manager should spend some time on trying to …
