Store: Transgendered shoppers welcome

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SEATTLE, Feb. 9 (UPI) -- The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington says a discount clothing chain has agreed to stop discriminating against transgendered people.

The ACLU said California company Ross Dress For Less has taken "positive steps," Seattlepi.com reported. Those include giving employees additional instructions on accommodating transgendered people with bathroom and dressing-room facilities appropriate to their gender identities.

The case involved a woman, identified only as Christie M., who was kicked out of a Ross Dress For Less store in Lynnewood in the Seattle area last year, Seattlepi.com reports. She wrote on a Web site she was trying on a sweater dress when the manager banged on the door and ordered her to leave the dressing room and the store.

"I felt so embarrassed and disgusted with myself," Christy M. wrote. "I have so much shame wearing on me that I can hardly move."

Lindsey Soffes, an ACLU lawyer, wrote the chain in December, notifying Ross the manager appeared to have violated Washington state discrimination laws. Soffes said Christie M. had the right to be in the store without being made to feel "unwelcome, unaccepted, undesired or unsolicited."