A New York cab driver must pay a lesbian couple $10,000 for ordering them to stop kissing or get out of his taxi, a city administrative judge has ruled.
The city’s Commission on Human Rights filed a complaint against the driver, Mohammed Dhabi, on behalf of Christy Spitzer and Kassie Thornton, charging that he discriminated against them during a cab ride in September 2011, DNA Info New York reports.
Spitzer had taken the taxi to meet Thornton, who had been traveling, in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, and then go to Thornton’s home in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park. They said that when they kissed, Dhabi told them to “keep that [behavior] for the bedroom or get out of the cab,” the site reports. They also said he called them “whores” and other derogatory terms for women. Soon afterward, they exited the cab.
During the March 13 hearing before Judge John Spooner in the city’s Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, Dhabi said the women were kissing “heavily” and “touching all over each other” and that he found their behavior so distracting he worried he might have an accident. Spitzer testified, though, that she and Thornton simply exchanged a “peck on the lips,” because, for one thing, she had just undergone major dental work.
Dhabi said he is not antigay and mentioned that he volunteers at a Metropolitan Community Church food pantry, but he claimed the women showed anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias, a charge the judge did not find credible, DNA Info reports His lawyer added that the driver has asked straight couples to stop displays of affection in his cab as well.
Spooner was not convinced. “The more likely reason for [Dhabi] stopping the taxicab and directing Ms. Spitzer and Ms. Thornton to stop kissing was, not that he objected to all kissing, but that he was uncomfortable with two women sharing a romantic kiss,” the judge said in his decision, issued last month.
He ordered Dhabi to pay $10,000 and a $5,000 civil penalty to the city, plus attend antidiscrimination training. The penalties are subject to approval by the Commission on Human Rights.
Spitzer, a TV executive, and Thornton, an actress, are now engaged and live in Los Angeles. They made a trip to New York for the hearing, as they felt it was important to pursue the case, Spitzer told DNA Info Friday. “It’s a weight that we’ve carried the entire time,” she said. “We know that people are discriminated against all the time. We just felt we had to let the driver understand that it’s wrong. So he could learn, and he doesn’t do it again.”
