Lambda Legal has sued Foot Locker Inc. on behalf of a former employee who was harassed by supervisors and co-workers.

“Kevin Dunbar was subjected to a nightmarish workplace and then fired because he is gay,” said Greg Nevins, a senior staff attorney with New York-based Lambda Legal. “Foot Locker could have addressed this problem, as it clearly promises employees in its policies, but instead chose to ignore it and make it worse. Our client followed the rules to address the discrimination, and all it got him was a pink slip.”

The lawsuit, filed in the South Carolina state Circuit Court in Columbia, claims Foot Locker did not follow its own anti-harassment policy as defined in the employee handbook. Foot Locker includes sexual orientation in its policies prohibiting discrimination, Nevins said.

Peter Brown, a spokesman for Foot Locker, would not comment specifically on the lawsuit, but said the company does have a policy against discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Dunbar worked for Foot Locker from May to August 2002. He was transferred to three different stores after he complained to managers that coworkers were calling him names in front of customers.

One manager told him: “I don’t want your faggot ass in my store,” Lambda Legal officials said in a statement.

Three customers who witnessed three separate incidents of anti-gay harassment have sworn affidavits on Dunbar’s behalf. One customer approached Dunbar and gave him her name and phone number, “because as a Christian woman I felt this was wrong, and the Lord told me to help and heal because the hurt, pain and embarrassment I saw on Mr. Dunbar’s face was intense.” On another occasion, a customer was shopping with her four children and heard Dunbar’s coworkers calling him “punk ass” and “faggot.” After one particularly harsh round of name-calling, a customer was concerned for Dunbar’s safety when she heard a coworker threaten, “I will beat his punk ass!”

In July 2002, Dunbar wrote a formal complaint, which company policy says must be kept confidential. Dunbar’s manager called the district manager and read the complaint in front of customers and Dunbar’s coworkers, Nevins said.

“Once I became a target, every morning when I woke up and I was scheduled for work, I knew that my supervisors and coworkers would verbally insult and degrade me, probably in front of customers. At best, they’d talk behind my back and make my every task twice as difficult – just because I’m gay,” Dunbar said. “When I took a job at Foot Locker, I looked at the policies and took comfort in knowing that the company was fair to gay employees. Since the policies were so clear, I never thought this would happen.”

In conjunction with the lawsuit, Lambda Legal has launched a “Blow the Whistle on Foot Locker” campaign on its website, designed to activate people nationwide beginning with a series of town hall meetings. A recently launched postcard campaign will engage thousands of people nationwide in the “Blow the Whistle on Foot Locker” team, giving consumers a way to directly tell Foot Locker leadership that they won’t tolerate discrimination.