British Columbia’s largest medical testing provider, LifeLabs, has been ordered to pay $32,000 to three patients who identify as transgender and non-binary, saying the lab misgendered and outed them during separate visits in 2019.
In her Oct. 29 decision, tribunal member Theressa Etmanski said the medical testing provider and its subsidiary Excelleris Technologies discriminated against the complainants by “misgendering” and “outing” them during separate visits at Vancouver and Burnaby locations in 2019.
According to the decision document, LifeLabs staff at a Vancouver service centre misgendered Noa Moses when they “refused to accept” Moses’s non-binary gender identity and forced Moses to choose a gender marker of either male or female, saying they would not draw blood otherwise.
Their conversations with Moses during the October 2019 visit took place in two waiting areas where others were present, the tribunal said, noting that Moses, “so exhausted and upset by that point,” eventually pointed to a letter on the paper so that bloodwork could proceed.
“I find this conduct placed Noa at risk of harm and I observe that this practice could have a chilling effect on other trans or non-binary people who may be unwilling to accept this risk of public disclosure,” Etmanski wrote.
On a separate occasion in October 2019, Devan Snow—described in the decision document as “a transmasculine person who does not identify as either male or female”—was refused after asking the Burnaby lab to update its records to include information that was different from the gender marker on Snow’s BC Services Card. A discussion ensued in front of other patients that involved “at least four staff members,” Etmanski wrote.
“Snow said everyone in the waiting room could hear what he was saying, and that his requests had become a ‘huge thing,’” the tribunal document said.
The third incident, which occurred at a Vancouver lab location in July 2019, involved Vincent Viezzer, who identifies as a transgender man. Viezzer had handed LifeLabs staff his lab requisition form on which his doctor had indicated a gender marker of “M.” However, when the form was returned to him, it contained a circle around the “M” with the letters “FTM” handwritten below, which he understood to mean “Female to Male.”
“He states that he had an emotional physiological reaction to seeing this writing, which he experienced as being ‘nauseatingly offensive,’” the tribunal document said, adding that this “had the effect of disclosing his transgender status without his consent.”
The tribunal ordered LifeLabs and Excelleris Technologies to pay $15,000 each to Moses and Snow and $2,000 to Viezzer for “injury to their dignity, feelings and self-respect.” The three complainants were also awarded lost wages of $491.17 to Moses, $552 to Snow, and $1,921.90 to Viezzer. The companies were further ordered to pay $11,100 to cover expert witness Dr. Elizabeth Saewyc’s report and testimony.
LifeLabs must also develop training on transgender and non-binary patients’ privacy considerations and provide it to all staff and management in the province within a year.
The case follows an earlier one in September in which the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal ordered B.C. physician Dr. Henry Ajaero to pay $28,100 in compensation to the family of a transgender teenager after he refused to administer a puberty blocker to the teen in 2021. Ajaero had said that gender transition is against his Christian faith, and that the procedure is outside the scope of his past medical experience and professional expertise.
Prior to that, the tribunal in February ordered former Chilliwack school trustee Barry Neufeld to pay $750,000 plus interest for comments he made between 2017 and 2022 criticizing gender ideology and B.C.’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) policy framework for the K–12 curriculum.
