A transgender former employee is suing the Chicago Cubs organization, accusing it of discriminating against her after she reported months of harassment and retaliation.
Milani Cooper, 35, said she was harassed daily by co-workers who would call her transphobic slurs, with one eventually threatening her with physical violence when she worked there from February through October of last year, according to the suit.
“It was difficult because I did love my job,” Cooper told the Chicago Sun-Times Monday. “I felt like working for the Chicago Cubs would be fun, like it would be a distinguished position. I was proud to work at Wrigley. … [But] I was pleading with HR to step in just to try to prevent them from feeling so comfortable attacking me every day.”
Cubs director of communications Jennifer Martinez said the organization doesn’t comment on pending litigation.
The suit, filed last week in federal court, says co-workers would threaten Cooper and others who were close to her, and that she was repeatedly scheduled at the same time as those co-workers despite regularly requesting different times in the eight months she worked for the organization.
She said the only response her bosses came up with to deal with the harassment was to schedule her to work on tasks by herself, though much of the ballpark’s maintenance requires people working together.
Cooper said other employees directed slurs toward her. She also said her supervisor encouraged others to call her by her birth name, refer to her using words that did not reflect her gender identity and otherwise harass her.
“It was everywhere — in public, in front of other employees,” Cooper said. “I was humiliated every day I was there. … It made me dread waking up every morning to go to work.”
In May of last year, she filed a complaint with her supervisor and human resources about the harassment, but she said nothing was done, and she continued to be scheduled to work at the same times as her co-workers, the suit said.
Shortly afterward, details of her written complaint to HR were shared throughout the company, and higher-ranking employees regularly discussed her case in front of others, continuing to do so despite Cooper asking them to stop. Her supervisor then began to write her up for cursing, and HR began to require her to make appointments despite having a walk-in policy, the suit alleges.
The threats and slurs then escalated in September when a friend of one of her co-workers shoved her to the ground at a CTA station as she and others were leaving work.
Later, a co-worker threatened physical violence against her, saying he and others would wait outside her home to attack her after the details of her reports to HR were leaked to other employees — though he wasn’t disciplined, according to the suit. Instead, she allges a representative from HR told her: “Maybe this job isn’t a good fit for you.”
“Every time he would threaten or harass me, I would go to HR to complain, and they’d say they found no evidence,” Cooper said. “He could do whatever he wanted to me and he knew it. … I didn’t know if tomorrow when I come to work I’m going to be ambushed or possibly killed.”
Cooper’s seasonal facilities job ended with the baseball season in October, at which point the company told her she was being let go and wouldn’t be brought back next season, though she said the co-workers who harassed her remain employed. She later filed complaints with the Illinois Department of Human Rights and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over the matter.
In her suit, Cooper is seeking back pay with interest, compensation for loss of benefits as well as other damages and costs.
But beyond that, Cooper said she is hoping the suit makes Wrigley Field a more welcoming place to work for other trans women and queer people in general.
“I wish [the Cubs] would have responded better to my complaints,” Cooper said. “I almost felt like they didn’t care.”