lawsuits

Amber Yust Changed Her Driver’s License Gender And All She Got Was a Lousy Letter of Abomination

After reading about Amber Yustā€™s awful DMV experience ā€” where the transgender San Francisco woman received a letter from a DMV staffer calling her an ā€œabominationā€ after trying to get her license renewed ā€” Queerty commenter the crustybastard suggested, ā€œLawyer up.ā€ She did. And sheā€™s suing.

Yust, 23, merely wanted to change her official gender from ā€œmaleā€ to ā€œfemale,ā€ a process that should be as straightforward as checking a box. For the most part it was; the DMV staffer raised no objections during the process. But later that day Yust received a letter from the employee, identified by her lawyers as Thomas Demartini, saying that being gay (not trans?) was ā€œan abomination that leads to hell.ā€ She also received a DVD, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, ā€œfrom a fundamentalist church warning of eternal damnation for anyone ā€˜possessed by demonsā€™ of homosexuality. The DMV employeeā€™s letter had referred her to the churchā€™s website as a source of ā€˜critical information for your salvation.ā€™ Whatā€™s more, the DMV had kept the employee on in 2009 even after he refused to process another transgender womanā€™s name-change application, Yust said in a damage claim filed with the state, the precursor to a lawsuit.ā€ That church is the Most Holy Family Monastery, and the package ā€œincluded ā€œa grisly leaflet showing hearts torn from bodies.ā€

And because the DMV employee used Yustā€™s personal information to contact her at home, Yust says not only was she scared, but her privacy was criminally violated. So far the DMV hasnā€™t responded to the suit, though two weeks after Yust received the letter a DMV administrator wrote her a letter of apology and said the incident would be a ā€œlearning experience for all employees.ā€

It certainly will be, when the DMV settles for an undisclosed amount.

[photo: SF Chronicle]

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