Bar owner must pay $400K in damages to transgender patrons, court rules

A Portland bar owner violated Oregon's civil rights laws by denying service to a group of transgender and gay customers whose presence he said would damage his business, a state appeals court ruled on Wednesday.

The Appeals Court upheld a 2013 ruling by Oregon's Bureau of Labor and Industries, which found that pub owner Christopher Penner ran afoul of a state statute prohibiting private businesses from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

The case hinged on a pair of voice-mails messages Penner left members of the Rose City T-Girls, a social club in Portland that includes transgender women, cross-dressing straight individuals, gay men and lesbians, in 2012.

In the voice-mails, Penner was apologetic but admonished the group's members not to return to his bar, The P Club, because they were hurting business and because other customers had derisively referred to his establishment as a "tranny" or "gay" bar, according to court documents.

Penner had to pay $400,000 in damages after the state's initial ruling and ended up closing the bar last year, his lawyer, Jonathan Radmacher, said. 

"Chris Penner doesn’t want to discriminate,” he said, adding he does not think the court addressed Penner’s free-speech claim in his appeal. “That may be an issue that we take up,” Radmacher said.