An Oakland, California transgender man says one of the pharmacists at a Walgreens refused to hand over his hormone replacement medicine, even though the prescription was ready for pickup.
Roscoe Rike posted his story and a video to Reddit’s r/Oakland forum on Tuesday. Though the text of the post has since been deleted, according to KRON, Rike said he had the specific prescription filled for three years at the Telegraph Avenue location. He also said he’d been going there for other medications for the past decade, and never had a problem before.
This time, though, an unfamiliar pharmacist was behind the counter. When Rike asked to pick up his prescription, the pharmacist, he says, asked what it was for.
“I told him I was pretty sure that it wasn’t any of his business,” Rike said, according to KRON.
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In a followup comment on the Reddit post, he added that since Rike wouldn’t tell him, the pharmacist tried calling Rike’s doctor—though Rike doesn’t know if he was able to find anything out.
The pharmacist then told Rike that he couldn’t fill the prescription “due to his religious beliefs.” This is when Rike took out his phone and recorded the video that can be seen in the Reddit post above. In the clip, Rike asks “So right now you’re telling me that you’re going to deny me my medication because of your personal religion, you’re not my f***ing doctor? So you think you know better than my doctor, that’s what’s going on?”
“I just need to know the diagnosis,” the pharmacist replies.
“Why? That’s none of your f***ing business,” Rike counters. “I’m going to let you know right now that I’m going to be reporting this, by the way, what’s your name?”
The pharmacist replies “Malik Tahir,” and Rike says that he’s going to report him for discrimination. Tahir says Rike can come in at noon, but Rike says he wants it now.
“Always the religious people who have the most f***ing hate in their hearts. You’re disgusting,” Rike says, and Tahir repeats that Rike can come in at noon. Rike reiterates that he wants his medication now, and the video cuts off.
In comments, he said that he’d “never yelled at a stranger before that day.” He then asked to see the manager, KRON reports, who “apologized profusely,” Rike said, and gave him his prescription.
Walgreens told KRON it would “review the matter.”
“Our policies are designed to ensure we meet the needs of our patients and customers, while respecting the religious and moral beliefs of our team members. In an instance where a team member has a religious or moral conviction that prevents them from meeting a customer’s need, we require the team member to refer the customer to another employee or manager on duty who can complete the transaction. These instances, however, are very rare,” a Walgreens spokesperson told the station.
Rike says he’s reached out to the Transgender Law Center and hopes to hear back in the next two weeks.
“My main concern is making sure I do everything I can to keep this guy from doing what he did to me, to anyone else. That comes first. If I can get a settlement out of it, great! But it’s not my priority. I just want peace for myself and other trans people trying to live their lives,” he wrote on Reddit.