Bradley Rudkin is the former general sales manager of Roger Beasley Misubishi in Texas. She was fired without warning by the dealership, she says because she is transgender. Rudlin also alleges that she was put at risk because her superiors at the company disclosed her status to the company's other employees. Rudkin has filed suit.
The dealership has filed a motion to dismiss the suit because firing Rudklin was a matter of free speech.
They also said that revealing Rudkin's status was an “exercise of the right of free speech on a matter of public concern.”
Rudkin, who identifies as a trans woman, was an award-winning, successful general sales manager achieving a $350,000 profit during her first full year with the dealer group. This was a $750,000 swing from the previous two years. Rudkin’s team won the Mitsubishi Come Back Cup Award in November 2015 after achieving 540% improvement in sales from the previous year.
Rudkin was a successful manager, reportedly helping the dealership to post a $750,000 upswing in revenue from the previous year. But the former employee says she dealt with abuse stemming back to his first month working there, when the vice president of the company asked her if she was a crossdresser.
In another incident that took place right before she was fired, Rudkin claims that employees made crude comments about her genitals when she was visited at work by her trans girlfriend.
Lawyers for the dealership made it clear that Rudkin lost her job due to being trans when they decided to invoke the First Amendment as a defense, arguing that the law gives employers the right to out employees as a matter of free speech.
Every lawsuit involves disputed events. What’s concerning to my client, and to the LGBT community, is Roger Beasley’s legal arguments that, if successful, would create anti-trans case law.
--Rudkin's attorney