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A former Dallas Arboretum employee says they were unjustly fired because of their gender identity — despite boosting attendance at the Children’s Garden and receiving praise from co-workers — and claims their termination is illustrative of a larger culture of discrimination at the organization.
The former employee, who uses she and they pronouns, said their termination followed dissent by management about their use of gender-expansive pronouns. However, their termination letter, which The Dallas Morning News reviewed, cites not complying with the dress code and mismanaging staff.
Allegations of a “hostile, rigid and not inclusive” work environment were detailed in a discrimination complaint filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the city of Dallas’ Fair Housing Office in November.
In an interview with The News, the former employee described patterns of bigotry by management against staff, as well as a mission of diversity that was only “surface-level.”
“My experience is not unique. It’s been happening at the arboretum to LGBT folks, to people of color, to women and just a lot of marginalized communities,” they said. The employee agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because they have not told their family about their gender identity.
A spokeswoman for the arboretum, Terry Lendecker, said in an email that the facility had not been notified about the complaint by the EEOC.
“The Dallas Arboretum takes this charge very seriously,” Lendecker said. “We believe in diversity and the equal treatment of all our employees. We will certainly present all the facts to the EEOC.” She added that the arboretum does not comment on personnel matters.
Neither the arboretum nor employees named in the complaint responded to follow-up questions. Executives on the arboretum’s board of directors either did not respond to requests for comment or had no comment.
Shelly Skeen, a lawyer with Lambda Legal representing the former employee, said the arboretum had asked for an extension to respond to the complaint.
The Dallas EEOC office did not respond to requests for comment, but a national spokesman said the commission cannot speak about pending complaints. The Dallas Fair Housing Office, which investigates allegations of employment discrimination, did not respond to requests for comment.
The arboretum — located on 66 acres of city-owned land on the southeastern shore of White Rock Lake — is managed by the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Society and is funded largely by donations and admission fees. The News is a sponsor of the gardens.
The arboretum receives a sliver of its funding from taxpayers — less than 2% — as well as a stipend from the city and support from the Parks and Recreation Department. More than 1 million people visited the gardens in 2021.
‘Conservative institution’
The former employee, who is in their 30s and genderqueer, was furloughed at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic and then rehired in June 2020 to oversee public programs in the Rory Meyers Children’s Adventure Garden.
That fall, the complainant added their pronouns to their email signature and began wearing small pins that read “they/ellos” and “she/ella.” A few other employees followed suit, according to the discrimination complaint.
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It was the first time the employee had shared their gender identity, the complaint says. Genderqueer typically describes someone who views their gender as fluid or outside the binary of male or female, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group.
At that time, the arboretum did not have a standard format for email signatures. Some employees had quotes, mantras or Bible verses in their signatures, Skeen said.
An upper-level manager sent a directive to staff about a month later saying email signatures needed to be standardized and could not include pronouns, the complaint says. The former employee told The News a donor had complained about seeing pronouns in a cisgender employee’s signature.
The complaint also alleges that management did not make accommodations for the employee’s disability, which impaired their ability to walk across the property and made them late to a meeting, and disciplined them for wearing a headscarf to protect from sun exposure.
The employee was warned about missing or being late to meetings in a May 17 memo included in the complaint. Skeen said the employee had not been previously disciplined, their performance reviews said they met or exceeded expectations and co-workers raved about their leadership. Attendance at the Children’s Garden also grew during their tenure, according to the complaint.
On May 20, 2021, the employee and their staff introduced themselves and stated their pronouns to their new upper-level manager. The former employee told The News that pronoun introductions were used internally among their staff — three full-time employees and about a dozen part-timers — to ensure “everyone was valued, respected and felt safe in their environment.”
The next day, that manager and the arboretum’s director of human resources told the employee during a meeting that “the Arboretum is a ‘conservative institution,’ that donors had complained about employees’ use of pronoun pins, and that the Arboretum could ‘not promote an agenda,’” the complaint says. They were told not to introduce themselves with their pronouns or wear pronoun pins.
The employee told The News that donors did not explicitly complain about their pins, which were about the size of a quarter. Complaints, however, had been made about a transgender employee’s larger pin, they said.
The employee told the HR director they were not OK with the changes.
The following Monday, the employee was terminated, according to the complaint. The complaint alleges the employee’s termination was tied to their “sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation [and] disability status.”
The termination letter, included in the complaint, listed late arrival to a meeting, failure to adhere to company dress code and failure to manage staff, among the reasons for the dismissal.
“It’s hard to describe the emotion,” the employee said of their firing. “There was a lot of panic and fear because it was the first time that I truly thought I could lose my job over standing up for who I am.”
“Beyond the career aspect of it, there’s a certain sense of grief and pain that happens,” they said. “It’s one of those emotions that until it happens to you, you can’t describe it.”
In an open letter published on Lambda Legal’s website, the complainant wrote: “While drying my tears, I listened to [the director of human resources] tell me that she personally supports the LGBTQ+ community, but the Arboretum can’t force it on the public. It would be like a vegetarian or vegan making others follow their dietary choices. Hearing a leader I trusted compare my identity to a choice was at that moment the lowest point of my career.”
The former employee told The News they later spoke with top management, including Mary Brinegar, the arboretum’s CEO and president, who explicitly mentioned the “pronouns stuff” as an example of mismanagement by the former employee.
The former employee described an attitude toward diversity among upper-level management that seeped into the work culture at the arboretum. They described trying to introduce diverse programs that were ultimately nixed by managers.
The former employee said only initiatives that were “surface-level” understandings of diversity and that executives found “tolerable” to a “very conservative, white, Christian” audience were allowed.
They said that during Arab American Heritage Month, a manager told them not to mention religion in the programming, for example. The former employee noted the irony of that request, given the arboretum’s Christmas Village.
‘Profound effect on people’s lives’
Following a Dallas Voice article reporting the discrimination charge, parks and recreation director John Jenkins sent a letter to Brinegar, the arboretum’s president, on Jan. 19 advising the arboretum to adhere to the nondiscrimination clause laid out in its operational agreement with the city, KERA News reported.
That clause says the arboretum cannot discriminate against any employee based on “race, age, color, ancestry, national origin, place of birth, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, military or veteran status, genetic characteristics, or disability unrelated to job performance.”
The agreement says if the arboretum fails to comply with the equal employment opportunity provisions, the city can terminate or suspend the partnership or declare the arboretum ineligible for future city contracts until it complies.
The parks department said in an email to The News that the city “takes allegations of discrimination at all organizational levels seriously. Contracted and management partner organizations are expected to adhere to the city’s nondiscrimination policies and practices, as well as follow state and federal anti-discrimination laws.”
Dallas’ city charter protects against discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression, and violating this is punishable by a fine paid to the city, Skeen said. The complainant may be entitled to compensation for lost income or accrued expenses if the EEOC finds evidence of discrimination, Skeen said.
Federal and state court rulings have also granted legal protections to LGBTQ employees in Texas, despite there not being a statewide policy barring anti-LGBTQ discrimination in the workplace, Skeen said.
The former arboretum employee said their fight is much more than wearing a pin or a line in an email: It’s about recognizing identities.
A 2021 study by the Pew Research Center found that about 26% of American adults say they know someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns when referring to themselves. That number is up from 18% in 2018.
Half of Americans said they would feel very or somewhat comfortable using a gender-neutral pronoun to refer to someone. But 48% of people surveyed said they would feel very or somewhat uncomfortable doing so, according to the study.
“This complaint is not just about me,” the former employee said. “It is about trying to push forward an understanding at the arboretum of how workplace culture and policies truly affect the employees and how exclusionary practices can have such a profound effect on people’s lives.”