An off-duty bartender who ordered a patron not to use the women’s bathroom and shoved the woman when she tried to explain her gender identity was found guilty of second-degree bias crime and harassment charges Wednesday.
The confrontation, captured on surveillance camera footage, showed Cassie McIntyre pushing customer Riis Larsen, a transgender woman, outside the women’s restroom at Jake’s Place.
McIntyre had finished her shift at the Sellwood bar and was drinking after work when the 15-second confrontation occurred on Dec. 27, 2022.
The two-day jury trial in Multnomah County Circuit Court is part of a trend for Portland prosecutors, who file more hate crime charges per capita than any other district attorney’s office in the state, The Oregonian/OregonLive previously reported.
Testifying in court Tuesday, Larsen said she had just stepped out of the women’s bathroom, a single-user room with a locking door, when McIntyre cornered her and told her she “was a man” and should use the other toilet.
Larsen, 35, said she tried to explain her gender identity but McIntyre, 40, told her to “get out” using an expletive, then shoved her. The video showed the shove but didn’t record audio.
Surveillance footage showed both women approaching the on-duty bartender following the brief altercation. Another patron, R.J. Stangland, testified that he could hear McIntyre continuing to use the wrong pronouns for Larsen and saying Larsen should not be allowed to use the women’s bathroom.
Larsen said she settled up and left the establishment in tears and called 911 later that night.
“She is scrutinized in a different way than most of us in our day-to-day lives are scrutinized,” prosecutor Charlie Weiss told the jury during closing arguments. “People sometimes express disagreement not with what she says, or what she does, but who she is.”
In her own testimony, McIntyre claimed Larsen had cut in line for the women’s bathroom and pushed another regular, who complained. McIntyre said she then intercepted Larsen but didn’t understand she was misgendering her.
“I wasn’t trying to misgender her — I had to look up what transgender was in the dictionary,” McIntyre said. “We were just arguing over spilt milk.”
McIntyre didn’t deny pushing Larsen but called it “making space.” Larsen said she never jostled anyone.
Judge Christopher Marshall sentenced McIntyre to 50 hours of community service and two years of probation.
McIntyre apologized in court and volunteered to stay away from another neighborhood bar so Larsen would have a place to go without worry. Her defense attorney, Henry Oostrom-Shah, said McIntyre hoped to find an LGBTQ nonprofit that would accept her community service.
Larsen, who sat in the gallery throughout the trial, said she had suffered wondering whether the jury’s verdict would simply be “another instance of transphobia swept away.”
“Because that’s the essence of transphobic bias — erasure. It’s not being believed,” Larsen said. “In our system, people are innocent until they’re proven guilty, but in the real world I was judged and sentenced within moments when Ms. McIntyre decided to harass me.”
