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Monday, March 03, 2025
A McDonald’s fired a trans worker who reported harassment. She won $900k. (Michael Brice-Saddler, WaPo, March 3, 2025)
Another day, another victory, for human rights and LGBTQ+ rights. $700,000 D.C. jury verdict after eight-day trial on hostile working environment created by managers at a Washington, D.C. McDonald's restaurant, directed against a trans woman. Three cheers! It appears that this is exactly the sort of anti-LGBTQ+ harassment that DJT, et al. want to empower. Righteous verdict under the District of Columbia Human Rights Act, under which both the late David Brian Wallace and I prevailed in settling our separate DCHR and National Labor Relations Board administrative lw cases alleging wrongful termination, brough cases against our respective D.C. nonprofit employers 1992-1993. Three cheers for the District of Columbia Human Rights Act of 1974. It became law when I was a deeply closeted Georgetown University freshman, when several fellow Georgetown students mouthed off about "queers." Different times. Now, DJT wants to erase the District of Columbia's right to govern themselves. From The Washington Post:
A McDonald’s fired a trans worker who reported harassment. She won $900k.
Diana Portillo said she faced discrimination while working at the fast-food restaurant in D.C. Now she helps other trans women in their struggles.
10 min
Diana Portillo, a trans woman from El Salvador, won a discrimination lawsuit against a McDonald’s in D.C. (Shedrick Pelt/For The Washington Post)
By Michael Brice-Saddler
For several years, this McDonald’s in Northwest Washington was the primary source of Diana Portillo’s torment.
It’s where Portillo, who is trans, says she was openly mocked by her co-workers and bosses who refused to use her chosen name. It’s where she said she remembers feeling humiliated after she was loudly reprimanded by a manager for using the women’s bathroom. And it’s where she says multiple complaints she made alleging discrimination were ignored or dismissed, up until the day she was fired.
But when Portillo peered inside McDonald’s store #695 on a recent afternoon, she was more conflicted than angry.
“This was the first job I had in Washington; it was the first job where I liked working there,” Portillo, 44, told The Washington Post through a translator. “But everything that came later, after my transition, caused a lot of bad memories.”
Portillo filed an employment discrimination suit against International Golden Foods, the company that operates store #695. In court filings, IGF broadly denied Portillo’s claim that she was harassed and discriminated against at the store, and argued that they had no choice to fire her because she was undocumented at the time.
After an eight-day trial , a jury in August made a rare verdict under the D.C. Human Rights Act, finding Portillo was subjected to a hostile work environment, then fired after making complaints. She was awarded nearly $1 million in damages. IGF is appealing.
Now, Portillo, who is originally from El Salvador, has a new job: working for the LGBTQ+ clinic that helped her, both during her transition and her legal fight. And she has a simple philosophy when it comes to helping others who might be facing the same battles she did.
“Fight for your rights,” Portillo said. “And do not allow anybody to humiliate you.”
An escape, and a new name
Growing up male in El Salvador, Portillo felt like a girl on the inside for as long as she can remember. Surrounded by sisters at home, Portillo said she was supported by her immediate family members, who didn’t flinch when she tried on her sister’s shoes and dresses.
But outside of her home, Portillo said she was a frequent target of harassment and abuse from extended family, classmates and even strangers. While testifying in court, she recalled walking home late one night when she was ambushed by a man who pointed a gun to her chin and demanded that she perform oral sex; the man threatened to harm Portillo or her family if she told anyone about the attack.
“In El Salvador, things are very polarized; black and white — if you are a man you have to look like a man,” Portillo recalled in an interview. “If you look like a woman but are a man that’s not seen very well in the eyes of God. And they give you a hard time.”
Fearing for her life, Portillo in 2006 fled to the United States and arrived in Maryland, where some of her family lived. She began working at fast-food restaurants and taking English classes at the library.And she soon found a community to embrace her at La Clínica del Pueblo.
Located in Columbia Heights, the bilingual community health center provides resources to residents from Central America and elsewhere. Their Empodérate program, which focuses on Latinos who are LGBTQ+, serves about 500 people annually by providing services like free medical testing, connections to interpreters and legal resources.
Suyanna Barker, chief program officer at La Clínica del Pueblo, notes that it’s particularly difficult for Latinos who also identify as LGBTQ+ to find a safe space.
“People used to tell us: ‘When I’m among the LGBTQ community, I feel safe to be gay, but when I’m around Latinos, I am not; yet when I’m with the LGBTQ community, I don’t feel safe to be Latino.’” Barkersaid. “There are levels to discrimination.”
At Empodérate, Portillo was welcomed by a group of transgender women who offered advice about employment and health care. They encouraged her to move to D.C. and she became a regular at the clinic. When she met trans women who were undergoing hormone therapy, Portillo was intrigued. She asked them what the process was like, since she was becoming interested in doing it, too. “They told me that I would be feeling a little bit fragile,” she recalls.
As she began thinking about her future as a woman, she also desired a new feminine name. Portillo struggled to come up with something until she remembered the beautiful princess who had captivated her as a child; first because of her elegant fashion sense, but later, her humanitarian work: Princess Diana.
“She didn’t mind picking up a child that maybe had HIV; she helped a lot of people who had lower resources,” Portillo said. “It makes me emotional to think about what her name represents.”
But outside the embrace of Empodérate, Portillo found a different reality.
When she started working at the McDonald’s in 2011, she presented as male. She said she was praised and promoted for her efforts, and her co-workers, who were mostly Latino, knew Portillo only by her birth name, Gerardo.
So when Portillo came out to her manager as a transgender woman in summer 2013, she anticipated it would take some time for her co-workers to get acclimated to her identity.
But she said her co-workers kept calling her Gerardo, even after she reminded them privately of her new name, Diana. And she noted she had not yet received an updated name tag, despite requesting one. She questioned whether her manager truly had her back.
Portillo sought help from Casa Ruby, a now-defunct LGBTQnonprofit in D.C. founded and run by a Salvadoran trans woman. Casa Ruby wrote a complaint to the store on Portillo’s behalf, describing the discrimination she had faced while urging the staff to respect her name and gender preferences.
But in a meeting a few weeks later, asupervisor told Portillo that no one at the workplace was obligated to call her Diana or recognize her gender identity, Portillo testified in court. Some of her co-workers grew emboldened after learning her complaints had gone nowhere, she said, continuing to call her Gerardo. She said she heard them making jokes about her genitals. She remembers arriving to the store in makeup , only to hear co-workers exclaim “the clown has arrived.”
In another instance, Portillo said she was sent home early after correcting a manager who had repeatedly called her Gerardo. “You are a guy. Your name is Gerardo. I am not going to complicate my life with you. You are going home,” the manager replied, according to Portillo’s testimony.
Portillo looks in the window of the McDonald's restaurant. (Shedrick Pelt/For The Washington Post)
“At the store, I found the same situation that I lived in El Salvador,” Portillo said at her trial, according to court transcripts. While crying on the witness stand, she added later: “I went to work every day praying to God to help me finish that day without losing it.”
While she said the director of operations for the store’s parent company did listen to her in 2015, giving her a new name tag, updating her name in the store’s computer system and allowing her to wear a scarf that female workers wear, Portillo also said the discrimination from her colleagues intensified.
“They would say, ‘What does it matter that they’ve changed the name in the system and gave you a name tag saying Diana, when you’re still Gerardo?’” Portillo recalled in court. In an interview, she continued: “It was as if someone threw a rock at a beehive and made everything worse.”
Staying in the fight
In late January 2016, La Clínica del Pueblo helped Portillo file a second written complaint that was nearly identical to the one she filed two years earlier. About two weeks later, tensions at the store came to a head when a customer complained to a manager that Portillo had used the women’s restroom. Instead of explaining why, Portillo says the manager lambasted her within earshot of the store’s customers — an incident was captured on video and played in court during the trial.
“You’re a man. You can’t use the women’s room. You’re not a woman,” Portillo recalled her manager saying loudly.
She was soon fired. IGF told Portillo she was terminated because of her unprompted admission weeks earlier that she ineligible to work in the United States, according to Portillo and a termination letter used as evidence during the trial. Portillo contends that IGF always knew this was the case.
She became so depressed that she tried unsuccessfully to take her own life.
She started working with a psychologist, but found it too painful to relive her memories at the store. So she again turned to her friends at Empodérate, who urged her to keep fighting.
In August 2016, with help from Whitman-Walker Health, a local health center that has long served the area’s LGBTQ community, Portillo submitted an external administrative complaint with D.C.’s Office of Human Rights against IGF. When the process stalled in 2020, she asked for her complaint to be dismissed so that she could file the case in D.C. Superior Court with the help of the Correia & Puth law firm in early 2021.
In addition to denying Portillo’s claims of harassment and discrimination, IGF said it was unable to confirm all of the allegations in her 2016 complaint after investigating the claims, according to a separate letter given to Portillo on the day she was fired — though the store found that managers and supervisors should be better prepared to accommodate transgender employees.
After the jury verdict in her favor, the store’s owner unsuccessfully petitioned for a new trial. In a statement, IGF said it hoped for a more favorable outcome in appellate court, where “we are confident the facts of this case will come out.”
Portillo says her experience at store #695 has fueled her desire to try to help others. She gained asylum in March 2024, and one month later she took a new job at Empodérate, where she helps clients get tested for STIs and directs them to resources such as immigration counseling.
More confident than ever, Portillo says she loves to explore new cities. And whenever she gets a chance, she goes out dancing with her friends. She remains in close contact with much of her family in El Salvador, and frequently gathers with her sister, nieces and nephews in Maryland.
Her family worried for her during the trial, with constant questions about when it would be over. She was thankful to tell them when it was finally done: “Everyone said, ‘Oh, thank God!’” recalls Portillo.
She hopes to make a career at Empodérate, where she assists young LGBTQ+ people navigating complicated processes like health insurance and legal systems. She helps lead a peer support group that meets twice per week. And she gets to advise trans women who enter the clinic’s doors in search of support or a community.
Portillo pays special attention to the newbies — particularly those who mention being harassed at school or at work.
She reminds them that they have rights. And she encourages them to stay in the fight.
Portillo stands with her trial team, from left: Jonathan C. Puth, Portillo, Claudia Inglessis and Andrew Adelman. (Shedrick Pelt/For The Washington Post)
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