Nurse settles transgender discrimination lawsuit against Western State Hospital
A nurse has settled her transgender discrimination lawsuit against Western State Hospital for $95,000.
Kaia Rasmussen, 49, filed her lawsuit against the state last year in Pierce County Superior Court.
“WSH discriminated against Rasmussen on the basis of sex/gender by making discriminatory comments after she started presenting as female at work, and failing to respond to her reports related to comments about her and transgender patients,” the complaint says.
Asked for comment by The News Tribune, Western State did not provide one by press time.
The settlement was finalized in October and recently paid out, one of Rasmussen’s attorneys, Janelle Chase Fazio said.
“I want people to understand the extent of protections under the Washington Law Against Discrimination,” the attorney said. “... This is something that you’re protected from in the workplace.”
The lawsuit gives this account:
Rasmussen served in the Army for 20 years and retired in 2011.
In 2016 she was hired as a nurse at Western State Hospital.
“Rasmussen self-identified as female her whole life,” the complaint says. “She spent about 10 years dressing as a woman in private, but she presented publicly as male until 2017.”
She started presenting as a woman at work March 7, 2017.
“Around the same time, there were two transgender patients on the F6 ward at WSH,” the complaint says. “Rasmussen overheard medical staff making disparaging comments about the patients. One WSH employee commented one patient did not need her hormones and was only pretending to be a transgender woman to avoid having to go to a male prison.”
Staff also failed to use the patients’ preferred pronouns and laughed about it, which Rasmussen reported to human resources.
She experienced similar treatment when staff failed to refer to her by her preferred pronouns and to call her Kaia, despite her repeated requests.
“This appeared to be a running joke among the WSH staff despite Rasmussen’s repeated attempts to be recognized and accepted by her colleagues as female,” the lawsuit said.
Rasmussen started suffering from anxiety, and her requests for reasonable accommodation were “largely ignored,” her lawsuit says.
She met with a supervisor June 20, 2017, and he “informed Rasmussen that because of her gender transition he was concerned she was no longer therapeutic to patients,” the lawsuit says.
Rasmussen told the man’s supervisors about his comments and was ultimately placed on “retaliatory administrative reassignment,” the complaint says.
“The reassignment letter referenced alleged patient neglect from an understaffed shift Rasmussen worked on or about Aug. 1, 2017,” the lawsuit says.
Ultimately she left Western State.
