Trans Woman Banned from Gym Following Conservative Uproar
A Missouri gym has terminated a trans woman's membership after receiving complaints for allowing her to use the women's locker room.
Eris Montano joined Life Time Fitness, a Minnesota-based gym chain with a branch in Ellisville, Missouri, to get in shape.
Before signing up, the 52-year-old, who is transgender, had formally changed the gender marker on her state-issued driver’s license by filling out a form with the state Department of Revenue and having a medical provider attest that she was undergoing treatments to assist her in transitioning.
The license identified Montano as female, and she was allowed to change clothes in the women’s locker room.
But in late July, another patron confronted Montano about her presence in the women’s locker room, insisting that she was biologically male. Montano told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the woman tugged at her own bikini top to show part of her breast to “prove that I am real woman.”
Life Time Fitness reportedly received other complaints about Montano’s use of the women’s locker room.
As the story spread to social media, conservatives began calling for a boycott of the chain to protest its policy allowing people assigned male at birth in female-designated spaces, as long as their official IDs matched their gender presentation.
One state lawmaker, Rep. Justin Sparks (R-Wildwood), called a press conference to demand an investigation into the gym’s polices, claiming it was necessary to ensure the safety of women and girls who might be present in the locker room.
Among the accusations flung at Montano was that she was using the gym’s locker room to expose herself to people — assertions she pushed back against, noting that she only changes clothes in single-person dressing room stalls, and drapes a towel over the door to shower.
“I’m not there to see anybody else,” Montano said. “I am there to change clothes, and get the heck out of there.”
The complaints led Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey to launch an investigation into Life Time Fitness over its policy on transgender members.
He cited Missouri case law indicating that a male’s presence in a female public restroom constitutes “criminal trespass,” accusing the gym of “potentially enabling criminal behavior.”
“It has come to my attention that Life Time Fitness has proudly adopted a policy that permits biological men to use locker rooms designated specifically for women and young girls,” Bailey wrote in a letter to Bahram Akradi, CEO of Life Time Fitness, Inc.
“Even more concerning is the fact that instead of taking the safety concerns from your gym members seriously, you rudely correct them and insist they call this biological male by the ‘correct pronouns.’ While it might be considered fashionable in certain corporate boardrooms to pretend that biology is irrelevant, the American heartland still lives in reality.”
Bailey’s investigation may also focus on how Montano was able to obtain a driver’s license with a female gender marker — something that Republican lawmakers say they wish to prevent in the future.
Ellisville police told St. Louis-based CBS affiliate KMOV that someone filed a police report about Montano’s presence in the female locker room. A department spokesperson told the news station that police would follow up to see whether any actual criminal activity had occurred.
Montano posted to social media about her experience, initially reporting that Life Time was standing by its policy and would allow her to use the women’s locker room.
Last Monday, however, the gym received screenshots of posts from Montano’s X account that they perceived as threatening. The gym terminated her membership and escorted her out of the facility.
“Life Time was presented with multiple, publicly available statements which could affect the safety and security at one of our clubs,” spokeswoman Natalie Bushaw told the National Review, referring to Montano’s social media posts. “We swiftly took action and this individual is no longer a member of Life Time.”
Montano — whose social media posts are filled with various stream-of-consciousness musings about a variety of topics, including transitioning, trans identity, religion, and politics — defended her posts.
She later wrote that Life Time Fitness “just decided to solve their trans girl in the locker room problem by misreading my remarks today as threats of violence rather than threats of lawsuits and terminating my membership, and having the police walk me out.”
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