A mob of people beat a transgender couple on May 31 after one of the partners used a public restroom in Bossier Parish, Louisiana. After the attack, police arrested one of the trans women, took her to a men’s jail, and has now charged the couple with offenses that could imprison them for months.
Near the end of a lakeside barbecue with friends at Cypress Black Bayou Park, Shae Sanders (a nonbinary person assigned female at birth) used the women’s restroom just as they usually do. As their partner, Aurora Rush, waited outside for them, a man approached her, used slurs against her, threatened to beat her up if she entered the women’s restroom, and tried to get her to fight, trans journalist Erin Reed reported.
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When Sanders exited the restroom, a crowd of at least 10 men and women had formed around Rush, blocking their exit, calling her a “tr**ny” and a “f**got,” allegedly threatening to murder her, saying they’d stop her from using the restroom by “any means necessary,” and proclaiming that their violence would protect children.
The mob then beat Sanders so badly that an ambulance later transported them to the hospital, where they received four stitches above their eye — doctors are trying to determine whether a neurostim brain implant in their shoulder may have been damaged during the attack, the result of which could kill them, Reed wrote.
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Rush had a concussion, a corneal scratch that temporarily blinded her in one eye, “massive welts” (including “one knot above her knee swelled to the size of an apple”), and pre-existing disabilities. But even though she has a female gender marker on her driver’s license, police threw her in a men’s jail under a man’s name she had never heard of. (She said the name she was booked in jail under belonged to one of her male attackers.)
The couple claims not to have fought their attackers. Nevertheless, police have since charged Sanders with one count of disturbing the peace (punishable by up to six months in prison), and Rush with one count for “fighting” and another for “offensive language” (punishable by up to a year in prison), Reed wrote. It’s unclear if police arrested any other individuals. The couple has pledged not to agree to any plea deals.
“I’m more angry at the response of the Bossier Parish Sheriff’s Office than I am at the people who beat us up,” Rush said. “They further victimized me. I cannot just go to court, sign a piece of paper, pay a couple hundred dollars in fines, and let it just go away like it never happened. It’s an egregious miscarriage of justice.”
The couple’s attorney, Courtney Newburry, said the attack was “targeted, calculated, [and] had been simmering all day,” as a result of “dangerous and harmful rhetoric that demonizes and dehumanizes transgender people.”
The couple were scheduled for arraignment on July 15, but it was postponed at the last minute for August. On the day of their postponed arraignment, the Bossier Parish police jury voted unanimously for Ordinance No. 22, which imposes criminal sanctions (up to a year in jail) on anyone who refuses to leave any restroom or changing facility on public parish property that doesn’t match the user’s sex they were assigned at birth.
The ordinance punishes any police officers, janitors, or employee who fail to remove an individual whose gender or sex have been called into question, Reed noted, adding that it’s unclear whether the ordinance is currently in effect. A public comment hearing about the ordinance is reportedly scheduled for September 22.
Reed wrote that the ordinance was personally requested by Bossier Parish Sheriff Julian Whittington after the attack upon Rush and Sanders.
Police juror Glenn Benton told Reed, “There was nothing on the books for him to do as law enforcement [in response to the attack and arrest]. That’s why he asked us to do it.”
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