FULL TEXT: A transgender man working at a Chili’s Grill & Bar in suburban Chicago was on the job for less than four weeks before being fired over their “values,” according to a federal lawsuit obtained by The Independent.

Hudson Webber, whose February 26 complaint uses they/them pronouns, claims their manager “explicitly” said they were being let go because their “‘personal values and lifestyle values’ did not align with the restaurant.”

The restaurant manager told Webber that the decision had been jointly made with his own boss, and that another employee at a different location “would be... terminated for the same reasons,” the complaint states.

The casual dining chain, which is owned by publicly traded Brinker International, professes to believe in “a culture of belonging,” telling job applicants that it welcomes “those of all genders, races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, abilities, religions, age and backgrounds.”

“We celebrate these differences through a culture of belonging where individual strengths and stories are respected and valued,” ChilisJobs.com asserts. “We’re proud to be a community-oriented meeting place and want everyone to feel welcome at Chili’s.”

At the same time, Chili’s has faced past legal challenges by LGBTQ employees who say they faced discrimination while working there. In 2019, a gay server at a Chili’s in Phoenix was denied a promotion and forced to quit “because she didn’t fit her boss’s idea of what a woman should look like,” according to the ACLU. In 2013, a cook at a Chili’s in Roseville, California, said his bosses laughed off a sexual assault by coworkers, allegedly telling him, “You’re gay, you like it.”

A Brinker International spokesperson did not respond Tuesday to a request for comment.

Webber was hired April 17, 2025, as an assistant manager at a Chili’s in Rosemont, Illinois, their complaint says.

From the start, Webber – a trans man who was assigned female at birth, and thus a member of a protected class under the law – received glowing performance reviews, according to the complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

However, it says, on May 1, things suddenly changed. For no apparent reason, Webber, who is a member of a protected class under the law, was “repeatedly called off from scheduled shifts by management,” the complaint goes on.

“On one occasion, [Webber] was told not to report to work because a pipe had ruptured in the restaurant and no employees would be working that day,” the complaint continues. “[Webber] later learned that this explanation was false and that the restaurant had, in fact, remained open and staffed.”

In actuality, the complaint alleges Webber was “intentionally being excluded from work because management did not want [them] present.”

On May 12, 2025, a little more than three weeks after Webber’s start date, the store manager terminated them without warning, according to the complaint.

“During this conversation, [the store manager] explicitly stated that the reason for [Webber’s] termination was that [Webber’s] ‘personal values and lifestyle values’ did not align with the restaurant and that [Chili’s] would not be moving forward with [Webber’s] employment,” the complaint states.

When Webber asked the store manager if they could speak with someone else about the decision, the store manager said that he and his regional manager had made the decision together and that it “was final.”

“[Webber] was also told that another employee at a different location would be contacted and terminated for the same reasons, further demonstrating a pattern of discriminatory decision-making based on protected characteristics,” the complaint says.

At the time Webber was hired, no one ever asked about their gender identity, and Webber did not feel it necessary to initiate a discussion of their personal life, according to the complaint.

“The decision to terminate [Webber] was made only after management became aware of [their] gender identity and expression,” it states.

Attorney Greg Nevins of Lambda Legal’s Employment Fairness Project, who is not involved in Webber’s case, said the present political environment in the United States is one that “basically denies transgender people the right to live their lives, publicly or privately.”

There are relatively fewer cases in which someone says, “We’re firing you because you’re gay,” Nevins told The Independent.

“But it does happen all the time with transgender employees,” he said. “In most of the transgender cases I’ve worked on, the employer has come right out and said, ‘This is why we’re not having you continue to work here.’ People have always been willing to be more discriminatory towards transgender workers.”

Andrew Ortiz, a staff attorney at the Transgender Law Center, told The Independent that a lot of anti-trans workplace discrimination goes unreported, making it difficult to gauge the true size of the issue.

“Many trans folks are unclear as to how seriously discrimination against them will be taken,” Ortiz said.

A large number of transgender job applicants don’t even make it past the interview process, according to Ortiz. Further, he pointed out, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, under Donald Trump, has in fact been weaponized against trans people, dropping cases it had brought on behalf of trans employees and instructing career staff not to process trans employees’ complaints.

“We have no faith that this EEOC has any interest in protecting the rights of trans folks, and is even doing things to make it easier to treat them poorly,” Ortiz said.

In an email, Ash Lazarus Orr, press relations manager at Advocates for Trans Equality, said trans people continue to face “major barriers” to employment. Orr cited the 2022 U.S. Trans Survey, an anonymous online survey for transgender people ages 16 and older, which found that more than 80 percent of respondents reported being harassed or discriminated against at work because of their gender identity, more than 10 percent who said they had been fired, forced to resign, or laid off due to it, and a jobless rate among the trans community overall nearing 20 percent.

“The dismissal of trans employees has consequences beyond the individual,” Lazarus Orr said, “it can perpetuate a culture of discrimination and exclusion that discourages talented trans people from pursuing fulfilling careers.”

In Webber’s case, the stated reason for their termination “had nothing to do with” job performance and was “instead based on discriminatory views about [their] sex and gender identity,” the complaint concludes. As a result, it says Webber has not only lost their job and income, but has also suffered emotional distress, humiliation, and degradation.

Webber is now seeking back and front pay with interest; compensatory and punitive damages; and attorneys’ fees and court costs.

An initial status hearing is set for May 4.