A cisgender teenage girl from Minnesota has filed a gender discrimination case against a Buffalo Wild Wings location after a server reportedly followed her into the bathroom and made her prove she is not transgender. 

Gerika Mudra, an 18-year-old high school student who is biracial and a lesbian, was out to dinner with a friend at the restaurant chain’s Owatonna branch in April when the incident occurred. She recounted how the two sensed hostility from the staff from the moment they arrived, saying in a video posted by local advocacy organization Gender Justice that their server was “rude” and “giving us dirty looks.” 

Their server largely ignored them, Mudra said, until she left the table to use the bathroom. That’s when the employee followed her in, pounded on her stall door, and proclaimed, “This is a women’s restroom. The man needs to get out of here.” Mudra said that she told the server “I am a lady,” but the worker still insisted “You have to get out now.”

Cornered and alone, Mudra said that she was forced to unzip her sweatshirt and show the server her clothed breasts to prove her gender. The server didn’t say anything else, then left the restroom.

“This wasn’t the first time something like this happened, but this is the worst time,” Mudra said. “Because other people — they just say, like, ‘This is a girl’s restroom’ and they just go on about their day. But this one kept it going. She was mad screaming. She made me feel very uncomfortable. Now after that I just don’t like going in public bathrooms. I just hold it in. And now I just think, like, ‘Oh I’m going to get harassed. I’m going to keep getting harassed like this.'”

Gender Justice has filed a charge of discrimination on behalf of Mudra with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights (MDHR), the body that enforces the state’s Human Rights Act. Though Mudra is not trans, she would still have a gender discrimination case if she was — Minnesota is one of 21 states that legally protect trans people’s right to use the facilities that correspond with their gender identity.

While no criminal charges have been filed, and it is unclear if any will be, the events as described by Mudra could fall under the legal definitions of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and false imprisonment. Megan Peterson, executive director at Gender Justice, said that the confrontation could have also led to further violence. 

“This kind of gender policing is, unfortunately, nothing new. And yet, in our current climate we have to ask: What if Gerika had been a trans person?” Peterson said in a statement. “Would this story have ended differently? That’s the terrifying reality too many trans people live with every day.”

“Gerika’s story sits at the intersection of anti-LGBTQ+ panic, racism, and rigid gender norms and stereotypes,” Peterson continued. “A growing culture of suspicion and control is targeting trans, gender-nonconforming, and Black girls and women—anyone who doesn’t match narrow ideas of how women should look or behave. When people are harassed just for existing, none of us are truly safe.”

Nearly one-third of LGBTQ+ people reported experiencing harassment for using a bathroom in a 2017 survey by the Harvard Opinion Research Program (HORP), as noted by Gender Justice. About 60 percent of trans people said in a separate study from Trans Equality that they avoid using public restrooms out of fear for their safety. 

“I just want like people to know they’re not alone,” Mudra said. “Like they’re not the only people this happens to. It’s okay to stick up for themselves and be okay with who they are.”