A former police officer who said the Clark County (Nev.) school district discriminated against him because he is a transgender man will receive $80,000 from the district to settle a lawsuit.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that the Clark County School Board has approved the payment to Bradley Roberts. He sued the district after being prohibited from using most of the bathrooms in district facilities and receiving harassment related to his status.
Roberts said that because of the district's restrictions, he began having headaches, stopped drinking water at work and was unable to sleep.
Roberts began working for the district as a campus monitor in 1992 after serving four years in the U.S. Navy as an aviation hydraulic mechanic. He joined the district police department in 1994. In 2011, he notified his supervisors that he was transitioning to a man and started conforming to the grooming standards for male officers and using the men’s restroom.
In 2011, Nevada adopted anti-discrimination laws that include protections for gender identity and expression. After the law went into effect, district police leaders and a district lawyer told Roberts he couldn’t use the men’s room because he was biologically female, and he couldn’t use the women’s room because he looked like a man.
Police supervisors agreed to refer to Roberts by his new name and use male pronouns with him. But department leaders and the district’s legal team told Roberts he would not be permitted to use men’s facilities until he showed them proof that he had a surgery to change his anatomy.
Roberts filed a complaint with the Nevada Equal Rights Commission in 2012, and the district reversed its bathroom ban, court records show. He filed a second complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, saying that emails about him sent to the entire department had opened him up to workplace harassment and retaliation for filing the complaint.
Roberts filed the discrimination lawsuit in 2014. U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey ruled in October that the district had discriminated against him under state and federal laws.
