Most workdays, LeAnne Withrow skips breakfast, has a granola bar or a spoonful of peanut butter for lunch, and drinks as little water as possible.
A transgender civilian employee of the Illinois National Guard, Withrow follows this restrictive regimen to limit how many times she has to use the bathroom at work.
No one raised concerns about her use of women’s restrooms in National Guard facilities or in federal buildings until, in one of his first acts in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order recognizing only two sexes, male and female, and directed federal agencies to ban transgender and intersex people from single-sex spaces that match their gender identity.
Now Withrow is suing, alleging the bathroom ban violates her civil rights. The proposed class action lawsuit seeks to represent all federal employees affected by the order.
“An executive order micromanaging which bathroom civil servants use is discrimination, plain and simple, and must be stopped,” Michael Perloff, senior staff attorney at the ACLU in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.
