The anonymous woman was awarded more than CAD $35,000 in damages.
By Samantha Riedel
June 26, 2024
The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario has awarded an Indigenous transgender woman more than CAD $35,000 (about $25,500) in damages, following her six-year legal battle against a waxing salon owner who discriminated against and publicly humiliated her, as the court determined.
The anonymous complainant, known as A.B. during the proceedings, filed her case in 2018 after she attempted to book a leg waxing service from the salon Mad Wax in Windsor, Ontario, owned by Jason Carruthers. After speaking with an employee who later testified that she did not know what the word “transgender” meant, A.B. received a call back from Carruthers, who assumed that A.B. wanted a Brazilian wax and told her that nobody would offer that service to “someone like you” — referring to her status as a trans woman, per court documents.
Following that call, A.B. — who at the time was a director at a local trans community organization — posted a video to social media warning trans people not to book services at Mad Wax, but removed it shortly afterward. Carruthers, claiming that he feared a “media circus,” then sent a press release to several local outlets including the Windsor Star that repeatedly referred to A.B. and trans women in general as “males” and claimed she had made “threats” against his business.
In a decision handed down May 23, tribunal Vice Chair Karen Dawson found that Carruthers had violated the Ontario Human Rights Code on multiple counts. Dawson stressed that while both parties’ versions of events differed significantly, Carruthers’ testimony “changed on key points when challenged on cross-examination,” including whether he had used the phrase “someone like you.” Dawson held that Carruthers “repeatedly misgendered” A.B. during their phone call; fixated on what he believed her genitals to be; outed her by distributing the personal information she had provided during the booking process to the press; used transmisogynistic stereotypes in claiming she had threatened him; and sought to publicly embarrass her in the media to disparage her human rights claim.
“I find that the respondents’ actions struck at the core of the applicant’s identity and in a very public way,” Dawson wrote. According to A.B.’s testimony, the ordeal caused her immense personal trauma, including the loss of her job, the dissolution of her marriage, increased issues with substance abuse, and suicidality. Although Dawson balked at awarding A.B. the full $50,000 amount she requested, the ruling nevertheless held that “an exceptional award is warranted in this case.” Carruthers was ordered to pay A.B. CAD $35,000 plus pre-judgment interest accruing from March 2018, as well as post-judgment interest beginning June 22 until the full amount is paid. Dawson also ordered Carruthers and all his employees to complete the Human Rights Commission’s online training course and provide proof within 30 days.
That date has come and gone, but Carruthers still claims he will appeal the decision. Carruthers launched a GoFundMe campaign on June 24 that had raised CAD $760 of its $50,000 goal at time of writing; the campaign is now the sole subject of Mad Wax’s homepage, currently emblazoned with the slogan “Justice for Jason.” Carruthers claims that contrary to Dawson’s ruling, he “did not discriminate against anyone,” and the decision “proves that any small business owner can be accused of discrimination.”
Megan Evans Maxwell, one of A.B.’s two lawyers from the Human Rights Legal Support Centre, told the CBC last week that she had still not received Carruthers’ application for judicial review, the first step in the appeals process. Even if Carruthers does file his application, Evans Maxwell said, she believes the ruling was sound and would be upheld. “We feel this is an incredibly significant case for trans people and we really do think that this is a move in the right direction,” she said.
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Although the Canadian Human Rights Commission itself says the country still has a long way to go to protect trans rights, Canadian human rights tribunals have increasingly sided with trans complainants in cases where they were intentionally misgendered or deadnamed in a place of business. Dawson’s decision last month cited a 2021 decision in British Columbia, in which the tribunal sided with multiple trans employees whose employer referred to them collectively with slurs and did not use their proper pronouns. Another decision in B.C. that same year found in favor of a nonbinary restaurant worker whose managers similarly refused to use they/them pronouns and referred to them with gendered terms of endearment. In February, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal awarded a trans man CAD $18,000 due to similar treatment by his former employers, who repeatedly used his deadname and probed him with invasive questions about his transition.
Such protections are generally lacking in the U.S., where some state courts have held that misgendering and other forms of transphobia are constitutionally protected free speech. President Joe Biden’s new rules broadening Title IX nondiscrimination law to include trans people were temporarily blocked in six states by a federal judge earlier this month, pending a lawsuit from six Republican-led states.
In a statement to the CBC last week, A.B. expressed some satisfaction with the tribunal’s decision, and said that it clearly laid out the facts about what she experienced.
“This decision brings me some peace,” she wrote in a statement. “It helps tell the story of the discrimination I faced and the steps taken to escalate that discrimination and harassment against me.”
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