Galla when her bias charge was filed, in December.Photo: UPN9 News via YouTube
In another small victory for the city’s ever-brawnier transgender-rights movement, Loehmann’s, that venerable mecca of fashion markdowns, has agreed to let its customers choose fitting rooms and restrooms based on the gender they identify as rather than the one they may look like to the rest of us. The decision came after Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund filed a complaint with the city’s human-rights commission because the Seventh Avenue store last year denied Jane Galla, “a transgender woman and regular Loehmann’s shopper,” as the press release describes her, access to the women’s dressing room. Galla took today’s news with aplomb. “Like all New Yorkers, I appreciate a good bargain,” she said in the release, “but the price is too high if I have to endure discrimination when I go shopping.” Agreed. But, well, what if it’s a really good bargain? —Tim Murphy
