Teen Forced To Wear ‘Gaytard’ Name Tag Files Discrimination Complaint Against Taco John’s
A teenager says his manager forced him to wear a name tag that read “gaytard.” He’s filing a federal complaint as South Dakota has no LGBT protections.
16-year old Tyler Brandt says he was working the night shift on June 23 when his manager at Taco John’s made a name tag for him: gaytard. He says he was forced to wear it out of fear of losing his job. The manager at the Yankton, SD Taco John’s says it was just a joke but Brandt, who is gay, didn’t find it amusing.
“It wasn’t my idea, and I never thought it was funny,” Brandt writes in a blog post for the ACLU. “It’s a mean, ugly word that makes fun of both gay people and people with developmental disabilities, and I would never call myself a name like that.”
With the help of the ACLU, Brandt is filing a federal discrimination complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.Â
“I’ve been out to my family and friends since I was in the 5th grade,” Brandt writes. “I’m not ashamed of being gay, and I don’t hide who I am from anyone.”
He says the Taco John’s night manager “was saying things about me to other employees behind my back, calling me ‘faggot’ and saying things like, ‘Tyler is so gay it’s not even funny.'”
And that’s when the demeaning act happened.
About three weeks after I’d started working there, the night manager called me into the office and handed me a name tag he’d just made. He said, “Wear this!” with a huge grin on his face like he was really proud of himself. I looked at the name tag and saw that it read “Gaytard” with little hearts on either side of the word. My mom raised me to be respectful and polite, and I didn’t want to lose my job. So I put the name tag on and then said, “Okay, can I take it off now?” He just laughed at me and told me to leave it on.
He made me wear that embarrassing name tag all night.
Brandt says the manager humiliated him by calling, “Hey, gaytard, help this customer!” and “Take out the trash, gaytard!”
The Argus Leader adds that the “manager of the franchised store in Yankton, John Scott, said over the summer that Brandt had asked for the name tag himself.”
“He asked the manager to make that name tag for him,” Scott said in June. “He (the manager) didn’t tell him he had to wear it. (Brandt) put it on himself and created the situation.”
“The manager who did all this … nothing happened to him,” Brandt said.
Back in June, The New Civil Rights Movement reported on Brandt’s story, highlighting the need for President Obama’s executive order outlawing workplace discrimination.
The ACLU created a website, Taco John’s Called Me a ‘GAYTARD’, for people to post their own photos with signs of names they’ve been called.Â
Here’s Tyler Brandt’s video:
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Image, top: YouTube. Insert via ACLU
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