State fines Delaware bar after employee tells trans woman to use the men’s room, then bans her

A Delaware bar has been fined a second time for discriminating against a transgender woman.The owner of Hideout Arcade Bar & Grille was fined $15,000 by the Delaware Human and Civil Rights Commission, according to the Delaware News Journal.An order issued by the commission in July shows that Hideout employees denied trans woman Kaitie Sorber access to the women’s restroom in the restaurant. “She was confronted, required to display her identification again, and instructed she could only use the men’s bathroom,” reads a complaint summary. A week later, after Sorber complained on social media about the treatment, she was denied entry to the establishment entirely and told she was permanently banned.Representatives of the bar said they required Sorber to use the men’s room based on the gender listed on her state ID and pointed to a process by which individuals can apply to the state to have that designation changed based on their gender identity. But the commission noted that, outside of her paycheck and state ID, Sorber had lived as a woman in her daily life since 2018.Related: Delaware Becomes 17th State to Outlaw 'Gay and Trans Panic' Defense“She does not hide her female gender identity and is proud of it,” the order reads.The commission ruled that the bar and its owner, Bryan Derrickson, had again discriminated against a trans woman.The latest penalty came just over a year after the same bar was fined $2,000 for denying a transgender woman entry in 2023. Half of that went to Kathy Carpenter Brown, who experienced the discrimination and is the founder of Transliance, an LGBTQ advocacy group in Delaware. The other half went to a state Special Administration Fund to help educate business operators about the state’s anti-discrimination policies.In the prior case, the bar used an ID scanner to designate which restroom patrons would be allowed to use, then denied entry to a trans woman who refused to allow her ID to be scanned.In addition to the fine, the