Trans woman says Texas donation center wouldn’t take her plasma. She’s fighting back
A transgender woman in San Antonio says a local plasma donation center discriminated against her when it refused to let her donate.
Nicole Throckmorton, 33, told the San Antonio Express-News that she felt “worthless” after walking out of Biotest Plasma Center on San Antonio’s North Side last month.
She was denied the chance to donate “solely on the basis of being transgender,” according to a copy of the discrimination complaint obtained by McClatchy.
“She told me they have a policy,” Throckmorton told local television station KSAT. “Their standard operating policy is to defer all trans women permanently. I asked if I could go in as a woman, and they said I had to go with my birth sex.”
If that is indeed Biotest Plasma Center’s policy, it appears to be based on an outdated FDA recommendation concerning blood and plasma donations from members of the LGBTQ community, according to throckmorton’s lawyer Justin Nichols.
Biotest referred McClatchy’s request for comment to the company’s vice president and legal counsel, who did not immediately respond.
For years, the FDA recommended against the practice of accepting blood and plasma donations from gay men, but in 2015, that recommendation changed. According to updated guidelines, FDA officials now only recommend that plasma donation centers defer potential donations from men who have had sexual intercourse with another man for 12 months.
Throckmorton’s lawyer, Justin Nichols, told KSAT that is not the case for Throckmorton — so, according to the updated FDA recommendation, she should have been allowed to sell her plasma.
The updated FDA guidelines also explicitly contradict the Biotest Plasma Center’s policy, Throckmorton argues. Both the FDA and the Red Cross suggest that for the purposes of blood and plasma donations, a potential donor should be able to self-identify and self-report their gender, meaning Throckmorton should have been treated as a woman, not a man, at her visit to the facility.
“There is no deferral associated with being transgender,” the Red Cross guidelines state.
“At all times, Ms. Throckmorton identified and presented as female, and did not give any answer disqualifying her from donating plasma,” Nichols, Throckmorton’s lawyer, wrote in an email to OutinSA. “Even still, Biotest enforced its discriminatory practice banning transgender persons from donating.”
Biotest does not specifically address potential donors from the LGBTQ community on its website, saying only that “donors must be 18 or older and must be in good physical health and lead a low-risk lifestyle.”
“Biotest’s refusal or inability to confirm whether it has a policy outright barring transgender persons from donating is a glaring indication it is unwilling to be forthright and transparent about its business practices, as related to discrimination,” the complaint reads.
An attorney for the City of San Antonio is reviewing the complaint and assessing whether San Antonio’s nondiscrimination ordinance, which was enacted in 2013, applies in Throckmorton’s case, the Express-News reported.