If you were fired, demoted, harassed, or pushed out of your job because you are transgender, you are not looking for a firm that will take your case as a favor. You are looking for one that has already done it, and won.
We have. We obtained a $12.5 million award for a transgender worker who was mistreated and ultimately fired for being transgender — and then, when the employer collapsed into bankruptcy, we kept going and recovered millions of dollars for her out of the bankruptcy estate. We have recovered substantial sums in other cases for transgender employees, and we are currently litigating additional cases protecting the rights of transgender people and the LGBTQ community.
Very few employment firms in California can say that. Most have never tried a gender identity case to verdict.
The $12.5 Million Case
Our client was a transgender woman with a bachelor’s degree from U.C. Berkeley and five years of administrative experience. She was hired by a Los Angeles structured-settlement and lending company to process loan documents. She lasted about twelve weeks.
Shortly after she started, her direct supervisor searched for her online, found her birth name, and concluded she “must have been a man before.” What followed was relentless. She was told she “sounds like a man.” She was called ugly. She was asked why she wore dresses, and questioned about her clothing and her makeup. Her supervisors called her “Heifer” — slang for a fat cow. They called her into their office to watch videos of a male comedian dressed as a woman, mimicking a young woman’s voice, so they could laugh in front of her. On the day she was fired, one of them left a note on her computer: “lock your computer, Heifer.”
The company’s owner and president learned she was transgender from a background check showing her legal name change. He announced to her supervisor: “No more hiring trannies, right!?”
She went to human resources. The company’s sole HR employee in California took notes at that meeting. Those notes vanished. The company first said no notes had ever existed. Then, after the HR manager testified that her office had flooded and she had thrown documents out, the company amended its discovery responses to say the notes were destroyed in the flood. There had been no flood — a fact the company was eventually forced to concede. Notes from the termination meeting disappeared the same way, with the same shifting explanations.
No one investigated. Not one witness was interviewed. No statement was taken. The supervisor accused of the harassment was never even asked about it.
Then the company fired our client and offered her eight weeks of severance — in exchange for a full release of claims — after ninety-two days of employment. The company had never given eight weeks to anyone employed less than a hundred and twenty days. An employee terminated one day earlier got nothing. Our client declined to sign.
The stated reason for firing her was performance. The woman hired to replace her, doing the same job under the same supervisors, was rated about the same — and when her performance slipped, she got detailed emails, two written warnings, probation, and finally a transfer to another department. Our client got no written warning, no probation, and no second chance. Meanwhile the company’s own witnesses testified that the supervisors had a long history of sabotaging employees they wanted gone: withholding work, withholding training, and blaming them for errors they had not made.
Neither the supervisor nor the HR manager had received the harassment prevention training California law required of them. The month before her deposition — after every allegation in the case had come to light — the supervisor was given a raise and told she was doing a great job.
Our client was awarded $12.5 million.
By then the employer had filed for bankruptcy. For a lot of plaintiffs, that is where the case quietly ends — a paper award against a company with nothing left to pay it. We pursued the claim into the bankruptcy proceeding, and several million dollars has been paid to our client through the bankruptcy estate, with the claim still being administered.
We mention that for a reason. Winning is one thing. Getting your client actually paid when the defendant falls apart is a separate fight, and not every firm stays for it.
Why It Came Out That Way
Cases like this are not won by describing what happened. They are won by proving it out of the defendant’s own mouth — which is what happened here. Every fact above came from the company’s own executives, supervisors, and human resources personnel, under oath.
The vanishing notes mattered as much as the slurs. So did the severance offer the company could not explain, the comparator who was treated completely differently, and the training the law required and the company skipped. That is the work: depositions, documents, and the discipline to keep pulling until the stated reason falls apart.
Our Other Results For Transgender Clients
- $12.5 million — award to a transgender worker mistreated and fired for being transgender; millions paid to date through the employer’s bankruptcy
- $1 million — settlement of a transgender harassment, discrimination and wrongful termination case
- Additional confidential settlements on behalf of transgender employees
The Huffington Post covered another of our transgender discrimination cases — a client who endured severe harassment at a Southern California auto dealership, including being denied access to the women’s restroom. Read the coverage.
Your Rights Have Not Gone Away
A lot of transgender workers have come to us over the past year believing their legal protections disappeared. That is not what happened, and the distinction matters.
What changed is federal agency guidance, not the law. In May 2025, a federal court in Texas vacated the portions of the EEOC’s harassment guidance dealing with gender identity. In January 2026, the EEOC voted to rescind that guidance entirely. Those were decisions about an agency’s interpretive document.
What did not change: the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), holding that firing someone for being transgender is discrimination because of sex under Title VII, remains binding law. And California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act expressly and independently prohibits discrimination and harassment based on gender identity and gender expression — it does not depend on federal interpretation at all.
For a California employee, state law was already the stronger claim before any of this happened. FEHA covers smaller employers than federal law, gives you three years to file instead of 300 days, and places no cap on damages. Federal law caps compensatory and punitive damages at $300,000 no matter how egregious the conduct. That single difference is why a $12.5 million verdict was possible.
If anyone has told you that you no longer have a case, get a second opinion before you accept it.
What California Law Protects
Under FEHA, your employer may not discriminate against or harass you because of your gender identity or gender expression. In practical terms, that includes:
- Firing, demotion, or refusal to hire or promote because you are transgender or because you transitioned
- Deliberate and repeated misgendering or refusal to use your name
- Denial of access to restrooms and facilities consistent with your gender identity
- Grooming and dress code enforcement applied to you differently than to other employees
- Slurs, mockery, or hostile comments from supervisors, coworkers, or customers
- Outing you or disclosing your transgender status without your permission
- Retaliation for complaining about any of the above
You do not have to have been fired to have a claim. A workplace made hostile enough that you could not stay is itself actionable, and so is retaliation for speaking up — even if the underlying complaint ultimately does not succeed.
Why Firms Turn These Cases Down
Gender identity cases are harder than most employment cases, and many firms avoid them. Employers rarely admit the real reason. Instead they produce a performance file assembled after you transitioned, a reorganization that happened to eliminate only your position, or a policy violation no one else was disciplined for.
Proving what actually happened means getting into comparator evidence, the timing of the employer’s sudden concerns, and what supervisors said when they thought no one was listening. That is document-intensive, deposition-intensive work, and it is why these cases are often tried rather than settled early.
We have done that work and taken it to a jury. If your case has been turned down elsewhere, that is not necessarily a comment on its strength.
What To Do Now
Before anything else:
- Write down what happened, with dates, and keep it somewhere that is not your work computer or work email.
- Preserve messages. Screenshot texts, emails, and chat messages, including timestamps and names. Employers control their own systems.
- Do not sign a severance agreement without having a lawyer read it. Signing may waive claims worth far more than what is being offered.
- Watch the deadline. You generally have three years to file with California’s Civil Rights Department. It is not as long as it sounds.
- Call before you quit, if you are still employed. What you do next can significantly affect what you are able to recover.
Working With Our Firm
We represent employees only — never employers. There is no version of this firm that defends the company on the other side of your case.
The initial consultation is free. We take employment cases on contingency, which means you pay no attorney’s fees unless we recover for you, and we advance all costs of litigation. You will not be asked to fund your own case.
Howard Rutten has represented employees for over 25 years and has been selected to Super Lawyers as a plaintiff employment lawyer since 2013. Our firm takes cases against Fortune 500 employers and has the resources to see them through trial.
Talk To Us
If you were harassed, discriminated against, or fired because you are transgender, we would like to hear what happened. The conversation is free and confidential, and there is no obligation.
Contact The Rutten Law Firm, APC or call 818-308-5945.
Serving Woodland Hills, the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles County, and employees throughout California.
Related: Sexual Harassment · Sexual Orientation Discrimination · Workplace Retaliation · Wrongful Termination · Case Results