Teen Files Discrimination Charge Against Buffalo Wild Wings After Server Allegedly Asked Her To Prove Gender In Bathroom

A Minnesota teenager filed a charge of discrimination against a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant on Tuesday. She claims a server followed her into the women’s restroom as she went to dinner in April 2025 and asked her to prove she was a girl.

Gerika Mudra, an 18-year-old cis lesbian woman, went to dinner at a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant location in Owatonna, which is near Minneapolis. She said that a server followed her inside the restroom and said, “This is a women’s restroom. The man needs to get out of here,” NBC News reported.

When she came out of the stall, she reportedly told the server, “I am a lady.”

“You have to get out now,” the server allegedly replied, according to Gender Justice, the organization that filed the charge on Mudra’s behalf.

Mudra said she showed she had breasts in order to prove her gender: “She made me feel very uncomfortable,” she said. “After that, I just don’t like going in public bathrooms. I just hold it in. … I want to be able to use the bathroom in peace.”

The lawsuit alleges the incident violated Minnesota’s Human Rights Act

Gender Justice filed a charge of discrimination with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights on Tuesday. The organization said the incident violated the Human Rights Act, which forbids gender identity and sexual orientation discrimination.

“Businesses have a legal obligation not to just have antidiscrimination policies on paper, but to train staff and ensure that those policies are followed in real time,” Sara Jane Baldwin, a senior staff attorney at Gender Justice, said on Tuesday. “When that doesn’t happen, the business is liable for the harm caused.”

A climate of ‘fear and suspicion’ based on gender

Gender Justice also said that the incident “reflects a broader climate of fear and suspicion aimed at anyone who doesn’t conform to narrow expectations of what girls and women ‘should’ look like,” according to NBC News.

Several states have laws restricting transgender people. Nineteen states prohibit trans people from using bathrooms in accordance to their gender identity in K-12 schools, while 27 states ban them from playing on school sports teams corresponding to their gender identities, per NBC News.

“This kind of gender policing is, unfortunately, nothing new,” Gender Justice executive director Megan Peterson said. “And yet, in our current climate we have to ask: What if Gerika had been a trans person? Would this story have ended differently? That’s the terrifying reality too many trans people live with every day.”