A 21-year-old transgender man says in a sex discrimination lawsuit that he was forced to leave his job at a Mississippi-based loan company once officials there found out he was born a woman but dressed and acted like a man.
Tristan Broussard filed suit on Monday against First Tower Loan LLC., a financial loan company based in Flowood, Mississippi, with offices in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri and Illinois.
Broussard charges he was forced to leave his job at its Lake Charles, Louisiana, offices in March 2013 after a company executive found out he was listed on his driver’s license as female. He charges that the executive demanded he dress and act like a woman, something he refused to do.
John Tucker, Tower Loan’s general counsel, declined to comment because the case is a pending lawsuit and it concerns a personnel matter.
Broussard was hired in February 2013 as a sales representative at Tower Loan of Lake Charles, a company affiliated with First Tower Loan.
In March of that year a supervisor processing his employment papers noticed that he was listed on his driver’s license as a female. Broussard said he told the supervisor that he was a transgender male.
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The statement he was asked to sign also included language saying that his “preference to act and dress as male, despite having been born a female, is not something that will be in compliance with Tower Loan’s personnel policies,” the suit contends.
Broussard refused to sign the statement and left the job.
