[Blog/News] [CA, USA] DMV continues investigation into reported transphobic letter
Stephanie Stevens
DMV continues investigation into reported transphobic letter
Thursday, November 4, 2010
California’s Department of Motor Vehicles is continuing to investigate
a report that an employee sent a transgender San Francisco woman a
letter calling her “an abomination,” a DMV spokesman said.
“Since it’s an employee matter, our office of internal affairs is
still investigating it,” Mike Marando, a DMV spokesman, said today
(Thursday, November 4). He said, “It would be premature to speculate”
how much longer the investigation might take.
He said the employee “is not working currently.” Asked if he’d been
terminated because of the letter, Marando said, “I didn’t say he was
terminated.” He wouldn’t say whether the worker’s been suspended, but
he said the worker hadn’t resigned.
“The employee has been removed from the field office,” said Marando.
The employee had worked in the Fell Street office in San Francisco.
Marando had said last week that the department hoped to “know
something within the next week or so.”
The Transgender Law Center said in a statement last week that Amber
Yust received a letter from the worker calling her “an abomination”
and telling her that she’s going to hell.
According to the center, Yust had gone to the DMV with her
court-ordered name change and DMV paperwork with her, and had obtained
a new driver’s license in her new name.
But October 18, she received a letter at home from the employee who’d
processed her name change. The DMV worker quoted from the Bible and
stated that Yust had made a “very evil decision” and that homosexuals
should be put to death, the center stated.
Yust declined an interview request, but in a TLC statement, she said,
“This has been a traumatic experience for me and I want to ensure that
nothing like this happens to anyone else.”
The DMV’s Marando said today, “In any case where we’ve investigated
employees, there is due process involved … . We investigate to the
fullest extent, and there are hearings conducted, and at that time we
make determinations.”
Filed by Seth Hemmelgarn in Uncategorized