(LYNCHBURG, Va.) — A trans woman fired by Liberty University last year is speaking to ABC News about the recently filed lawsuit alleging the university let her go for being transgender.
Ellenor Zinski was hired by the university to work at its IT Helpdesk in 2023. According to the complaint, her performance was assessed as above average within a few months, and she was told she was “on the path to success” by a supervisor.
She told ABC News she didn’t talk openly about her identity at work. She was raised in the Christian denomination that most aligns with Liberty University, and said she had hesitations about how open she could be in the workplace.
“There was office talk that would kind of bring me down, and I knew I couldn’t say anything out loud, but I was able to make some friends,” said Zinski. “There were some people that I did feel comfortable coming out to in private, but in public, while I was working, I was just there to work, and I was not going to try and express my identity at all.”
Zinski knew working at Liberty University might present some complications. However, as a Christian herself, she had hoped “that God’s love and acceptance would shine through.”
“Unfortunately, that did not happen,” Zinski said.
On July 5, 2023, shortly after her performance review, she sent an email to the Human Resources department at the university noting that she identified as a transgender woman, had been undergoing hormone replacement therapy and would be legally changing her name to Ellenor, according to the complaint.
She said she stressed that the change would not impact her performance and did not request any accommodations.
About a month later, on August 8, 2023, the complaint reads she was called into a meeting and given her termination notice – which is not yet public record and has not been obtained by ABC News. According to the ACLU, the letter cited that the denial of her “biological and chromosomal sex assigned at birth” was in conflict with the university’s Doctrinal Position.
On its website, the university states that among behaviors considered “sinful acts prohibited by God” is the “denial of birth sex by self-identification with a different gender.”
“I started crying. It was awful,” said Zinski. “It’s really hard to be rejected for something that you can’t change about yourself, for who I am on the fundamental level.”
Liberty University told ABC News it does not publicly comment on legal matters or personnel matters.
On July 29, 2024, the ACLU of Virginia and Butler Curwood filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Zinski, who argues that her termination is in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.
While in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, the Supreme Court ruled that firing individuals because of their sexual orientation or transgender status violates Title VII’s prohibition on discrimination because of sex. The court did not address whether there is an exemption for religious employers.
“The big thing is: being Christian is a choice that I made with my heart, but being transgender is who I am,” said Zinski. “There’s no conflict between my faith and my identity.”
News of her firing comes amid a national rise in anti-transgender sentiment and legislation. The ACLU has recorded more than 500 anti-LGBTQ bills nationwide in 2024, many of which affect restrictions on someone’s preferred pronoun and name in schools and the workplace, access to gender-affirming care, and more.
“This is absolutely a time of crisis for transgender people in this country,” said Wyatt Rolla, senior transgender rights attorney at the ACLU of Virginia. “There is an unprecedented onslaught of legislation in nearly half the states in in the U.S. targeting particularly trans young people, but also Increasingly trans adults. And that’s the context in which Ellenor experiences being terminated just because of who she is.”
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