A disabled Christian Army veteran who formerly worked as a Walmart employee filed a lawsuit against the company last Thursday, claiming that he was wrongfully terminated after reporting multiple sexual harassment incidents stemming from transgender females using the men’s restroom.
In a lawsuit filed last Thursday, Joseph Allen, a disabled Army veteran, claimed that Walmart violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act by not providing him with reasonable accommodations for his religious beliefs regarding restroom policies at the store. Allen argued that the company’s failure to accommodate his request led to him being sexually harassed and suffering health complications related to his disabilities.
The lawsuit explained that Allen is a “100 percent disabled Army veteran” with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which causes the veteran to soil himself if he does not have quick access to a restroom.
According to the lawsuit, Allen soiled himself while working for Walmart in October of 2023 due to the only two stalls in the men’s restroom being occupied by biological female employees “who identified as males who claimed to be transitioning to men.”
Despite requesting designated restrooms in a meeting with a Walmart manager, Allen later discovered one of the transgender female employees staring at his groin while he was exposed in the restroom during another incident in October of 2023. The Army veteran reported a sexual harassment complaint; however, the Walmart manager told Allen that employees were allowed to use the restrooms that reflected their gender identity.
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According to the lawsuit, Allen was allegedly harassed by multiple transgender employees after reporting the sexual harassment incident to management. Allen claimed that the transgender employees invaded his personal space at work while driving motorized shopping carts through the aisles he worked in.
In December of 2023, Allen reported that one of the transgender employees stared at his groin a second time in the men’s restroom. However, instead of management taking action against the transgender employee, the disabled Army veteran was fired after two transgender employees “filed a false harassment” complaint against him.
Allen’s lawsuit states, “Despite [Allen’s] reports of harassment and seeking to engage in an interactive process with [Walmart] on multiple occasions, [Walmart] instead ignored [Allen] and retaliated by terminating him and claiming, about four months after his initial complaint, that he was the perpetrator of harassment instead of the victim.”
The lawsuit adds, “Rather than comply with their obligations under federal and state law to engage in an interactive process for a reasonable accommodation with [Walmart] and make a good faith effort to investigate [Allen’s] complaints of sexual harassment, [Walmart] determined it would be better to terminate the conservative Christian disabled veteran than actually comply with its legal obligations to him in the face of potential backlash from the transgender community.”
