Posted August 12, 2018 3:51 am by

Planet Fitness gender flap unresolved

Planet Fitness gender flap unresolved…The person at the center of a Planet Fitness locker room dispute who identifies as a transitioning transgendered woman says he was the one who was harassed — not the woman who was upset that he was in the ladies’ room.

Jordan Rice, who goes by Ivey Gardner, was in the women’s locker room at the Leesburg Planet Fitness when a woman confronted Rice about being in the wrong locker room. Rice, according to the woman, lingered there for a while, and a verbal confrontation later ensued. The woman’s membership to Planet Fitness was revoked when she complained to management.

Now the woman, identified in a complaint as Mrs. H, is being represented by Liberty Counsel, a national litigation and civil liberties organization. Liberty Counsel is demanding that her membership be restored and that the company “make changes to its membership and locker room policies to prevent blatant sex-based harassment by males in the women’s facilities,” according to a letter sent to the gym company’s chief executive.

No lawsuit has been filed. Liberty Counsel gave Planet Fitness until Aug. 10 to respond. That deadline has been extended.

Rice says Mrs. H instigated the confrontation.

“I was literally harassed for the better part of an hour,” Rice said in an interview with the Daily Commercial on Wednesday.

Rice said he was putting on makeup after getting a tan and claims the woman called him “a clown” and said, “stop trying to be a woman.”

That is not true, said Holly Meade, director of communications for Liberty Counsel. “He is trying to make this about him,” Meade said. “This is about Planet Fitness.”

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Liberty Counsel said Mrs. H initially thought Rice had made a mistake and told him he was in the wrong room. She waited for an hour to use the locker room, thinking Rice would leave. Instead, Rice was smirking and using the excuse of putting on makeup in front of a mirror that provides a full view of women going into the showers, she said.

“I wasn’t trying to provoke anyone,” Rice said.

“I don’t put on makeup, but my wife does, and she doesn’t take an hour to do it,” said Richard Mast, the attorney handling the case for Liberty Counsel.

Planet Fitness issued a statement saying, “Under our gender identity non-discrimination policy, members and guests may use all gym facilities based on their sincere self-reported gender identity. Furthermore, all of our locker rooms include private changing areas for those that seek additional privacy.”

The gym has a “no-judgment” policy.

It is not judging to complain about a man in the women’s locker room, Mast said.

After failing to get the gym to make Rice leave the locker room, Mrs. H. left and was followed across the parking lot by Rice.

“I was just trying to get the license plate number so I could call 911,” Rice said.

When police did come, they said it was a civil, not a police matter.

“I had a panic attack. I could not speak to them. I was sobbing hysterically. I was Baker-Acted and went to LifeStreams for three days,” Rice said.

The event was disturbing for Mrs. H., too. According to Liberty Counsel, she was once the victim of an attempted rape.

“I can empathize with that. I was a rape victim, too,” Rice said. “But that doesn’t give her the right to talk to anybody like that.”

“This is not the only incident with Mr. Rice known to Planet Fitness,” Mast wrote in a letter to Planet Fitness CEO Chris Rondeau. “Another woman reported that he exposed his naked body to her in the women’s locker room at this location. In another instance, he was involved in an argument with another woman over the uses of the tanning room. Misogynist, anti-woman harassment should have no place in Planet Fitness locations, and it violates Florida Law.”

Rice denied ever being nude in the locker room. He said the only time he took a shower he was wearing a bathing suit.

“I have been a full-time woman 100 percent of the time for three years. I don’t have the hormones and I haven’t had the surgery. These things are not free. It’s called transitioning for a reason,” Rice said.

“I get it that it might make somebody uncomfortable,” Rice said, but added that people cannot impose their perception onto someone else.

Using a solitary locker room is not an option, Rice said.

“I’m not going to be made into something subhuman. This is not the 1960s with white rest rooms and people deciding what water fountains you can use. This is 2018. We’re not going anywhere.”

Planet Fitness just lost a similar case that went all the way to the Michigan Supreme Court.

Yvette Cormier sued Planet Fitness claiming the company was in violation of Michigan’s consumer protection laws. Her membership was canceled because she warned others about seeing a man who claimed to be “transgender,” in the women’s locker room.

Planet Fitness told her that it allows people to use the locker room that matches their “identity.”

A circuit court judge had dismissed her lawsuit in 2016, and an appeals court affirmed the judge’s ruling before the case went to the state supreme court, according to a press release posted on Liberty Counsel’s website.

“The plaintiff was already a member of the gym when she learned of the unwritten policy and was thus subject to a financial penalty if she canceled her membership earlier than provided in the membership agreement,” the majority opinion stated.

“Plaintiff’s actions indicate that she strongly preferred a locker room and a restroom in which individuals who are assigned biologically male are not present, and it is thus reasonable to infer that defendants’ failure to inform plaintiff of the unwritten policy affected her decision to join the gym.”

“We commend the Michigan Supreme Court in this decision against Planet Fitness which is endangering women by allowing men in the women’s facilities and punishing those who object,” said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel.