A transgender woman who previously worked at a Target store in Gloucester County has filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, accusing the retail giant’s employees of years of systematic harassment and discrimination. The woman’s claim cites dozens of examples of the hostile work environment she faced, which she blames for her constructive discharge.
The woman, Christine Crumb, was hired by Target Corporation as a General Merchandise Team Member in March 2017. According to her complaint, the discrimination against her began shortly after she began exploring her gender identity in early 2020 and intensified when she began presenting as female in March 2022. At that point, she began enduring what she describes as “relentless bullying and ridicule” from coworkers and supervisors at the Sewell, New Jersey, store. Despite repeatedly reporting the harassment to supervisors and the company’s human resources department, the harassment continued, ultimately leading to her resignation in July 2023.
The woman’s lawsuit presents a detailed list of dozens of incidents spanning three years, including multiple employees, including store supervisors, consistently and purposefully misgendering her, calling her “man,” “sir,” and “brother” despite her wearing a name tag that clearly indicated her preferred pronouns. Her lawsuit claims that several supervisors referred to her as a “drag queen,” with one executive team lead reportedly telling her, “I haven’t seen you come into work in drag in a while” in front of numerous witnesses, including human resources personnel.
The woman’s complaint also details several incidents of sexual harassment, including requests from coworkers to touch her breasts “to see if they feel like the real thing” and graphic questions about gender-affirming surgery. She describes one particularly disturbing incident that involved a coworker allegedly asking Crumb to engage in sexual activity with him and a friend, and another in which a coworker eyed her body up and down and said that if he worked in her department while she was presenting as female, he’d “be in so much trouble.”
Beyond this direct harassment, the woman’s lawsuit describes her experience of feeling increasingly marginalized at work, as coworkers questioned her right to identify as transgender, telling her she wasn’t “androgynous enough to present female” and that she wasn’t worthy of having breasts. The hostile environment became so severe that a health condition that led to tremors and seizures grew worse, and that until the time she left the company, she regularly took bathroom breaks to cry.
The former employee’s claim indicates that despite multiple reports to the store’s management and human resources department, Target failed to take meaningful corrective action and that instead of addressing the problem, the company retaliated by cutting her hours and scheduling her for shifts she had previously avoided.
In May 2023, the woman sent an anonymous email to Target’s CEO, Brian Cornell. She detailed the discrimination she’d experienced, including being called a drag queen, repeated misgendering, sexual harassment, and invasive questions about her medical procedures. According to the complaint, Cornell never responded to the email. She also called the company’s integrity hotline about the ongoing discrimination and harassment that she’d been experiencing at work, but during that call, the employee managing the hotline said that they sincerely doubted that the discrimination and harassment that she was describing could have taken place.
The woman’s lawsuit cites five separate causes of action: discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, retaliation under Title VII, discrimination under New Jersey state law, retaliation under New Jersey state law, and aiding and abetting under New Jersey state law. Title VII is a federal law that prohibits employment discrimination based on sex, among other protected characteristics. Though this law was written and passed before transgender rights became an issue, federal courts have interpreted sex discrimination to include discrimination against transgender individuals because it treats people differently based on their sex assigned at birth versus their gender identity.
The lawsuit also cites the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (NJLAD), which provides even broader protections than federal laws do. New Jersey leads the country in its extension of protected characteristics to explicitly include “gender identity or expression.” The NJLAD prohibits discrimination in employment based on numerous characteristics, including sex, gender identity, and expression, and covers all employers in New Jersey, regardless of size. In addition to compensatory damages, it allows plaintiffs to receive attorney’s fees and punitive damages, too.
In her lawsuit against Target, the woman is seeking compensatory damages for emotional distress, lost wages, and harm to professional reputation, as well as punitive damages based on her allegations that the conduct was willful and malicious. She also claims ongoing physical and emotional effects from the alleged discrimination, including anxiety, depression, and difficulty eating and sleeping.
Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination offers protection against workplace discrimination and harassment. If you’ve been a victim and need information on the relief available to you, contact Schorr & Associates today to set up a time for us to speak.