On Tuesday Judge Susan Webber Wright of the Eastern District of Arkansas has denied a request for summary judgment in the case of Dawson v H&H Electric.

Patricia Dawson of White County claims that she was fired by H & H Electric of Hot Springs because of her sex and because of her failure to conform to expected sex stereotypes.

Ms. Dawson began working as an apprentice at the company in 2008, presenting as male under her birth name Steven. On June 21, 2012, she had her name legally changed to Patricia Yvette Dawson.

She said she ran into resistance the next day when she showed the company's vice president her driver's license with her new name and the gender marked as female and tried to formally change her name on company documents. She said the vice president, Marcus Holloway, told her he would hate to lose her and advised her to keep her legal name and her transition quiet.

In the summer of 2012 Ms. Dawson says she twice discovered that her work had been sabotaged.

The lawsuit alleges that she started to wear makeup and more obviously feminine clothing to work in September, prompting Holloway to complain that he couldn't get anything done because people kept going up to him and talking about her.

The transition process was a necessary part of Dawson's treatment for gender dysphoria.

Dawson says that Holloway fired her of September 17, 2012, saying "I'm sorry, Steve, you do great work, but you are too much of a distraction and I am going to have to let you go."

It is well settled that Title VII's interdiction of discrimination 'because of an individual's sex' ... prohibits an employer from taking adverse action because an employee's behavior or appearance fails to conform to gender stereotypes [Price Waterhouse v Hopkins]. ... The Court finds that Dawson pleads sufficient facts to state a legally viable claim that H & H discriminated against her because of her sex in violation of Title VII.

--Judge Wright

H & H had claimed that Title VII did not apply in the case of a transgender person.

The Court finds that Dawson has provided ample evidence from which a reasonable juror could find that she was terminated because of her sex.... Dawson also presented enough evidence to show that H&H's stated reason for firing her -- that she threatened to sue the company for which H&H was doing work, without discussing it first with her immediate supervisor -- was merely a pretext for sex discrimination.

The case will now proceed to a jury trial.

“The court recognized that what Patricia Dawson faced was sex discrimination. We are pleased that Patricia Dawson will be able to have her day in court to correct the injustice of being fired simply because of who she is.

--Ria Tabacco Mar, ACLU

Disclaimers: I transitioned in Arkansas as a professor of mathematics in 1992 at the University of Central Arkansas. I have no doubt the administration at UCA examined every possible legal avenue for terminating my employment. I was, fortunately, tenured before I transitioned. I let it be known that any attempt to fire me would find us in federal court. I did not have total confidence in the outcome because UCA could choose to have a jury trial and my fate would be determined by the people selected to be jurors for that trial.

Secondly, my father was a member of the IBEW for nearly his entire adult life.