Two Chicago gay men have filed a discrimination complaint against Yellow Cab Co., saying they were kicked out of a cab for exchanging a kiss.
In the latest example of such an incident, after similar ones in
Houston,
D.C.,
New York,
and
other cities
as well as a previous one in Chicago, Stephen Murphy and Daniel Costa say they exchanged a chaste kiss in a taxi, which enraged the driver. They say he ejected them from the cab less than two blocks from the downtown restaurant where he'd picked them up, reports Chicago TV station
WLS.
"Dan reached over and just gave me a close peck kiss on the cheek," Murphy told the station, with Costa adding, "The taxicab driver said to us we could not do that in his cab."
The incident occurred in August, but the men filed a discrimination complaint Wednesday with the Illinois Department of Human Rights. In it they allege that the driver said, "Get out and get another taxi if you want to do that!" Illinois and Chicago law both prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
"Same-sex couples are entitled to the equal access to public accommodations, and taxicabs are public accommodations," the couple's lawyer, Ed Mullen, said in a press release from the Civil Rights Agenda, a Chicago-based LGBT rights group. "Illinois law is clear that anything other than full and equal access for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people violates the law." He said he intends to file a complaint with Chicago authorities as well.
In a
2013 Chicago case,
in which another gay couple said they were ejected from a cab for kissing, city regulators fined the driver, who failed to appear for a hearing, but the Illinois Department of Human Rights dismissed the couple's discrimination complaint because the driver, for Sun Taxi, was an independent contractor and therefore the state body had no authority over him. The couple, Steven White and Matthew McCrea, followed up by filing a
lawsuit
in Cook County Circuit Court last August through Lambda Legal, naming Sun Taxi as a defendant. It is still pending.
Yellow Cab officials were not immediately available for comment, WLS notes. Watch its report below.
