Walmart fires woman who reported anti-trans threats from man in bathroom​on March 28, 2025 at 9:15 pm

Dani Davis was in the women’s restroom at the Walmart where she worked when she heard a man’s voice shouting from outside the stall.

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The man yelled a slur for transgender people and said he was going to beat them up, Davis said. She was the only person in the bathroom at the Lake City, Florida, store.

Davis, who is not transgender, said she feared the man thought she was trans because she is 6-foot-4. She hid in the bathroom until the man left and told her supervisor what had happened.

A week later, Walmart fired her.

Davis, 29, said she was told she’d been fired for not reporting the March 14 incident to higher-up managers, creating a “security risk.” Besides losing her job, she said the incident left her terrified at how anti-trans sentiment had led someone to threaten her with violence.

“It was all very scary and heartbreaking and confusing,” Davis said.

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Walmart spokesman Joe Pennington said the company reviewed the incident and has made multiple attempts to invite Davis to return to her job with back pay.

“We want our associates to feel safe and supported in their workplace, and we won’t tolerate bullying or threats of violence against our associates or customers,” Pennington said in an email to The Washington Post.

Davis, who was a week shy of her seventh work anniversary at Walmart, said she has been bullied about her height before but never accused of being transgender or harassed for that reason.

But when she heard angry threats echo in the Walmart bathroom where she sat alone, Davis could only assume she’d been swept up in the nationwide surge of anti-trans attitudes that has spilled through Congress, prompted hundreds of anti-trans laws and spurred an increase in hate crimes.

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“He was yelling about [transgender people] and how he was going to mess them up,” Davis said of the man in the restroom.

Davis said she also heard a woman’s voice, which appeared to be of the man’s partner, urging him to get out and warning that he would get in trouble. The man was “yelling about how he was going to get all of them and protect her,” Davis said.

Davis waited for the man to leave before exiting the bathroom and finishing her shift. Her immediate supervisor was supportive when she reported the incident, she said. So she was shocked and confused when she was fired around a week later for not reporting the incident to the right managers and creating a “security risk.”

“I took it to mean that I was the security risk because someone had mistaken me for trans,” Davis said.

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Davis attempted to appeal her firing through Walmart’s internal processes but was unsuccessful, she said. She then filed for unemployment benefits and posted on social media about the incident.

On Thursday, Davis got an email from the company offering to reinstate her employment with back pay. But she said she was hesitant to return to Walmart.

“I think it would just be a hostile environment to return to,” she said.

Confrontations over gender identity have led to accusations and threats against both cisgender and transgender people. Spectators, parents and school board officials have accused girls of being transgender after seeing them in sporting events. Trans people’s use of bathrooms became a national flash point in 2016, when North Carolina passed a law that required trans people to use the public restrooms that match the sex on their birth certificates, instead of those matching their gender identities.

That bill was repealed a year later after protests and sweeping boycotts that cost the state an estimated $3.7 billion. But reports of women being harassed or threatened in bathrooms and accused of being trans have continued.

Davis, who is gay, said she has felt disheartened as conservatives have stepped up attacks on LGBTQ+ rights. She is hoping to leave Florida, but she said the sudden loss of her job complicated those plans.

“The intolerance … I hear it all the time,” Davis said. “It just feels like everything’s closing in on me.”

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