For Transgender People, Workplace Discrimination Is a Reality, Supreme Court Ruling or Not

When I graduated from college in the spring of 2015, I was unemployed, newly transitioning and entirely unprepared for the overwhelming negative impact that being openly trans would have on my employment status.

In the following months, I learned my trans identity would be the focal point of every job interview going forward. I learned that I would always be judged and picked apart for my appearance, or singled out for having my dead name and assigned gender marker on my driver’s license. This was made especially clear when I landed my first job as an out trans employee.

Any financial relief I took from being employed was replaced by humiliation when I was told something so horrible while on the job, that I spent the rest of my shift writing a letter of resignation.

I still fume when I think of that interaction. But since then I’ve done everything in my power to become my own boss and establish myself as an independent professional, avoiding situations where my gender identity could be used against me in a workplace. After five years of personal sacrifice and hard work, it seemed like everything was finally starting to go my way — until coronavirus erupted like it did.

In the midst of an economic crisis fueled by COVID-19, the transgender community is among the most vulnerable populations as workers across the country face pandemic-related workplace shutdowns. While a new Supreme Court ruling has offered nondiscrimination protections for trans people — meaning we can file a case if we are fired for being trans — the realities of working while trans remain bleak.

Trans people already experience high rates of unemployment and employment discrimination as it is, and several trans people who spoke with Teen Vogue agreed that the spread of COVID-19 has only added fuel to the fire.

Dallas resident Riss Vee Martinez, 23, has had difficulty finding work after being furloughed and eventually let go from their barista job at a private business in March. They have since applied for over 90 positions, with minimal leads in sight.

“I’ve been told [by community] to stay away from production warehouses.…while not being a 100% passable trans man because I’d be an easy target,” Martinez said.

Martinez is wary when seeking new employment, because their past work experiences as an out nonbinary trans boi have been marred by harassment and mistreatment. Three months into a former job, they made the decision to transition publicly while continuing to work.

“I just took my first T shot. I knew changes were coming, but I wasn’t comfortable coming out to my new manager,” Martinez said. “Fast forward two months in, and my voice is sounding funny. So every day, I’m trying to figure out how to switch my pronouns with the staff.”

After Martinez came out at work, they say they endured an ongoing barrage of harassment and misgendering, which included being intentionally dead-named. They eventually left that job and became a barista, until COVID-19-related layoffs. After that, Martinez was looking forward to attending a Dallas-based, gender-inclusive career fair planned for the end of March, but like everything else in the first weeks of pandemic shutdowns, the fair was canceled.

“So many trans people I know were really depending on this job fair, even me,” they said.

According to a 2015 survey conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality, 30% of its 27,715 trans respondents reported being fired, denied a promotion, or otherwise mistreated in a workplace in response to their gender identity or expression. That situation is now combined with the pandemic. As the coronavirus continues to impact the job market, the stakes are being raised for trans people whose lines of work have been disrupted by social distancing measures and mandatory closures.

Atlas Mathews, 20, told Teen Vogue he had a summer position lined up designing a theater program for children, but it was canceled due to COVID-19.

“I was going to finally be able to be out in a workplace this summer, but that job got canceled,” he said. “I’m being forced back to retail and food service, just so I can have a job, and in those professions, at least in my experience, being out can open you to danger from employees, employers, and customers.”

Mathews is in the same boat as many of his peers in the arts, who are currently limited in the ways they can generate income from their creative work. He explained that creative fields offer a chance to work for yourself; that removes the compromises often involved in working for a company or another person.

“With trans folks, a lot of people turn to things that are self employed, like music and writing, because your boss can’t discriminate if you are your boss,” Mathews said. “Most of my trans friends have jobs based in the arts, and the arts are being decimated by the coronavirus.”

As a musician and poet, I can speak directly to the struggles of making ends meet in light of sudden financial losses due to COVID-19. A large source of revenue for performers comes from door money, ticket sales, and merch sold at live shows, so when all my upcoming gigs were canceled due to stay-at-home orders, I had to find a way to replace the income lost. That means having to compromise more often than not.

Mathews said the pandemic has exposed the ways trans people ignore microaggressions and harassment to de-escalate a confrontation or limit an interaction in the workplace. In other words, many of us need to be employed more than we need to feel safe or valued at our jobs.

“I think, for me, corona is highlighting the transphobia I turned a blind eye to, because I need to to survive,” said Mathews.

The National Center for Transgender Equality reported that, while the U.S. unemployment rate at the time of its 2015 survey was 5%, the unemployment rate for trans people who took part in the survey was 15%, three times the national average. In May of this year, the U.S. unemployment rate hit 13.3%, based on a report published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Given the disparities already in play, it’s hard not to wonder how high transgender unemployment might be right now.

Sherry Davis, 36, has been out as a trans woman for the past 10 years, which has affected her ability to find steady work living in Chicago. She described a particularly upsetting moment during a job interview in 2014:

“The man that was interviewing me asked, was I ‘a trans.’ I guess he could tell,” she told Teen Vogue. “After telling me how pretty I was for being ‘a trans,’ he told me that he couldn't hire me because it would make the job atmosphere too uncomfortable.”

“I’m homeless now, living in a tent community by the 290 freeway,” she said, and added that the pandemic has made her situation even more dire in recent months.

“I haven't been really looking how I should because of my circumstances. I don't have any job interview clothes and don’t look presentable,” Davis said.

Homelessness is too often a reality for trans people excluded from the economy. The 2015 survey from the National Center for Transgender Equality found that one in eight respondents had reported experiencing homelessness in the year leading up to the study — as a result of how their transness was perceived. Furthermore, the National Alliance to End Homelessness reported that of the homeless trans population in 2018, 56% were unsheltered.

For many trans people, consistent work can be hard to find, and even harder to maintain, because so much of the search is dictated by how we appear. But the onus should not be on us to make cis employers more comfortable by changing our physical appearances, especially not in the middle of a pandemic. Work is work, and trans people are capable regardless of whether or not we pass.

As the death toll continues to rise while our economy crashes, the coronavirus is yet another obstacle between us and survival. But as we’ve proven time and time again, the trans community as a whole will survive. But I have to ask, at what cost?

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