## Facts

- Meggan Sommerville, a transgender woman, worked for Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. as a frame shop manager and began medically transitioning in 2007.
- Hobby Lobby updated its employment records and benefits to identify Sommerville as female and did not object to her feminine presentation at work.
- In 2010, Sommerville notified management she would use the women’s restroom; the store manager denied access and requested proof of legal authority or documentation changing her sex.
- Sommerville provided documentation including a court order changing her name, updated government identification, and a medical letter describing her as a transgender female and supporting her use of the women’s restroom.
- Hobby Lobby continued to bar her from the women’s restroom, at times requiring surgery or a revised birth certificate showing female sex as a condition of access.
- Hobby Lobby later installed a single-occupancy unisex restroom available to all employees and customers but still prohibited Sommerville from using the women’s restroom.
- Sommerville was disciplined, including receiving a written warning, for using the women’s restroom.
- The Illinois Human Rights Commission found ongoing emotional distress caused by the restroom restriction and related discipline.

## Issues

1. Whether denying a transgender woman access to the women’s restroom at work constitutes discrimination because of sex (and gender identity) under the Illinois Human Rights Act.
2. Whether the Act permits an anatomy-only definition of “sex” that excludes transgender women from sex-segregated facilities consistent with their gender identity.
3. Whether the Commission’s emotional-distress damages award was supported by the evidence and permissible under the Act.

## Decision

- The appellate court affirmed the Commission’s order finding Hobby Lobby liable under the Illinois Human Rights Act.
- The court upheld the finding that excluding Sommerville from the women’s restroom constituted unlawful discrimination in the terms, conditions, or privileges of employment.
- The court rejected Hobby Lobby’s proposed anatomy-based definition of sex as inconsistent with the Act’s protections as interpreted and applied by the Commission.
- The court held that providing a unisex restroom did not eliminate discrimination where Sommerville remained barred from the women’s restroom available to other women.
- The court affirmed the Commission’s damages award, including compensation for emotional distress.

## Legal Principles

- Under the Illinois Human Rights Act, denying a transgender employee access to sex-segregated workplace facilities consistent with the employee’s gender identity can constitute sex-based discrimination.
- Conditioning access to a workplace facility on surgery or amended birth records, when not required of other employees in the same sex classification, may be discriminatory unequal treatment.
- A separate or alternative facility (e.g., a unisex restroom) does not necessarily cure discrimination when it operates to exclude a protected employee from facilities available to others in the relevant group.
- On administrative review, an agency’s factual findings are upheld unless against the manifest weight of the evidence, and the agency’s application of the statute to the facts receives deference absent clear error.
- Emotional-distress damages may be sustained when supported by evidence of humiliation, anxiety, and continuing harm caused by discriminatory workplace treatment.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed administrative findings that barring a transgender woman from the women’s restroom at work violated the Illinois Human Rights Act and that the resulting emotional harm supported an award of emotional-distress damages.


Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. v. Sommerville, 186 N.E.3d 67 (Ill. App. Ct. 2d Dist. 2021)