The Delaware Human Relations Commission fined Hideout Arcade Bar & Grille $15,000 after finding staff denied transgender patron Kaitie Sorber access to the women's restroom and later banned her. The commission noted Sorber has publicly lived as a woman since 2018 despite a differing gender marker on some documents. This is the second penalty for the bar; it was fined $2,000 in 2023 for a related incident. Advocates continue to call for boycotts of businesses owned by the bar's owner.
Delaware Bar Fined $15,000 After Telling Trans Woman To Use Men's Restroom And Banning Her
hideout arcade bar & grille
The Delaware Human Relations Commission has fined Hideout Arcade Bar & Grille $15,000 after finding the establishment discriminated against a transgender patron, the Delaware News Journal reports.
An order issued in July describes how staff at the Hideout confronted transgender customer Kaitie Sorber, requested to see her identification again, and instructed her to use the men's restroom. About a week later, after Sorber posted about the incident on social media, the bar denied her entry and told her she was permanently banned.
Bar representatives defended the actions by pointing to the gender marker on Sorber's state identification and noting that Delaware permits people to apply to change that designation. The commission, however, emphasized that Sorber had publicly lived as a woman since 2018 and that "she does not hide her female gender identity and is proud of it."
Commission Finding: The commission concluded that the bar and its owner, Bryan Derrickson, discriminated against a transgender woman. This ruling came after an earlier 2023 enforcement action against the same bar.
The $15,000 penalty follows a previous $2,000 fine in 2023, when Hideout denied entry to another transgender woman after using an ID scanner to determine restroom access. In that earlier case, half of the fine went to Kathy Carpenter Brown, the complainant and founder of Transliance, while the remainder was directed to a state Special Administration Fund to educate businesses about anti-discrimination rules. The commission also required the bar's employees to complete anti-discrimination and equal-accommodations training after the 2023 decision.
According to the July order, Derrickson implemented in 2023 a policy of using state IDs—scanned for authenticity—to decide which restroom patrons could use. He testified, "Driver's license, whatever they have on it, if it's male, female or something else, we'll go by that," and said the policy was partly prompted by a complaint from a patron whose 8-year-old daughter objected to using a restroom with a trans woman. The commission criticized Derrickson for speaking only with the girl's parents rather than the child to evaluate whether she truly felt threatened.
Kathy Carpenter Brown has urged continued boycotts of businesses owned by Derrickson, including Hideout, Conch Island and Crushers. The story comes as Rehoboth Beach recently elected its first openly LGBTQ mayor, Susan Stewart, and Delaware elected Sarah McBride in 2024 as the nation's first openly transgender member of Congress.
This report originally appeared on Advocate and was republished with local reporting in the Delaware News Journal.
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