Ansley Baker, the woman who was ejected from a women’s bathroom at a Boston hotel in May after an employee falsely accused her of being a man, filed a lawsuit on Thursday against the establishment and multiple employees, records show.
Baker and her partner, Elizabeth Victor, filed the lawsuit against the Liberty Hotel and several employees and company executives in Suffolk Superior Court.
The suit comes after the hotel agreed in November to make a $10,000 donation to an LGBTQ group and take other measures to settle an discrimination complaint over the incident with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination.
The lawsuit filed Thursday said Baker and Victor were denied the right to use a women’s restroom at the hotel on May 3 by a security guard “because of what Ms. Baker looks like and because they are in a lesbian relationship.”
When the women objected, “the security guard threw them out of the hotel,” the lawsuit stated. The hotel later “panicked” when the pair took to social media to recount their experience, it stated.
“Instead of simply acknowledging its employee’s discriminatory conduct and apologizing, the Liberty Hotel executives agreed to craft a defamatory statement, knowing it was false, suggesting Ms. Baker and Ms. Victor were kicked out of the Liberty Hotel because they had been engaging in obscene conduct in a stall,” the lawsuit said.
Leonard H. Kesten, a lawyer for the women, said the pair were never in a restroom stall together. Despite the previous MCAD settlement, Kesten said, his clients still don’t know who specifically made the false claim against them.
“We’ve always said that we are not going to settle until we know who did it and why,” Kesten said.
The hotel did not immediately comment on the lawsuit.
At the time of the MCAD settlement, a hotel spokesperson said the establishment had worked with the commission “to address this incident and help us strengthen our practices. We had sought to include Ansley Baker and Liz Victor in this process.”
The spokesperson said the hotel had “reached agreement with MCAD to resolve the issue, committing to continued staff sensitivity training and other steps.”
MCAD brought the complaint against the hotel in June, one month after Baker, of Dorchester, and Victor were ejected from the hotel, where they were attending a Kentucky Derby-themed event.
A security guard questioned Baker about her gender in the women’s restroom and when she showed her ID indicating that she’s female, “the guard failed to remedy the situation and instead, continued to eject the couple from the premises,” the commission said in its ruling.
The commission said the hotel had retaliated against the couple by issuing “a false statement to the media implying that the women were somehow in violation of the Liberty Hotel’s policies.”
When MCAD initiated its complaint, a spokesperson for the hotel said a review of the incident found that “the employee was in the wrong and his actions were well beyond regrettable.”
“No guest of ours should ever be treated in a manner that is anything other than respectful and welcoming,” the statement said. “We apologize to our guests, and to our community particularly the LGBTQ+ community. We continue to work on making amends with Ansley and Liz while we have taken corrective action and sensitivity training.”
Mark Fischer, the Liberty’s general manager, said after the MCAD settlement that “we deeply regret that our initial statement may have created unintended impressions about the actions of Ansley and Liz.”
In the lawsuit now pending in Suffolk Superior, the women allege they suffered damages “in excess of $10 million,” according to the the civil complaint’s cover sheet.
The complaint itself said the women are seeking “to recover actual damages, punitive damages, and reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs.”
The hotel hadn’t responded in court to the suit as of Thursday afternoon. No hearings have been scheduled.
Speaking to reporters in June, Baker said she has faced “comments” and “looks” when using the women’s room in the past, but the incident at the Liberty Hotel was her “worst nightmare coming true.”
Material from prior Globe stories was used in this report.
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