A transgender activist with a long history of filing lawsuits against the city of New York is at it again, this time claiming the city made prostitution the only option to earn money for a dog.
Transgender rights activist Mariah Lopez (born Brian Lopez) is suing the city over a claim that a homeless shelter rejected a request to bring the animal inside the shelter. After the rejection, Lopez claims to have been “forced” to take up prostitution to care for the dog.
Lopez claimed to be “forced” into “sex work” to afford the cost of boarding his dog Chica when the Bronx shelter rejected the animal.
Despite Lopez’s claim that the acts of prostitution are recent, the New York Post notes that Lopez has at least six prostitution arrests going back as far as 2004.
In the lawsuit, Lopez says the city is violating the Americans With Disabilities Act by barring entry to the dog, but officials for the city counter that there is no proof that the dog is a service animal, which would qualify it to be welcomed into the shelter.
“We do not believe it is a service animal. We do not believe it performs any task,” a city lawyer said in a recent court hearing.
Lopez claims that “sex work” is necessary to pay for traveling between the shelter and the kennel where the dog is boarded, but city attorneys say that the dog issue “is not a blank check to act like a jerk.”
Still, despite their stance in court, it appears that the city is clearing the way to allow the dog to stay in the shelter with Lopez.
The move to reverse course and allow the dog into the shelter had Lopez celebrating on Facebook. “I won. I woooon,” Lopez said in a video posted on Facebook. “Bitch, I always win!”
Lopez has filed, and won, at least half a dozen lawsuits against the city in the last ten years, including a lawsuit that forced the city to pay $20,000 for sex change procedures. The Post says Lopez has won up to $51,000 from the city in lawsuits filed since 2004.
In 2008, Lopez was at the center of a charge that jailers at Rikers prison were giving special treatment to an accused cop-killer.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston, or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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