Uber driver booted N.J. passengers because they were gay
The incident led to the swift dismissal of the driver from Uber.
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Outraged and incredulous, the passenger asks the Uber driver, “Are you kicking me out because I’m gay?”
“Yes, I am,” the driver responds. “Yes.”
A same-sex couple from Oaklyn captured on video Friday an encounter with an Uber driver who tossed them out of her Toyota Highlander over their sexual orientation. One of the passengers, Kristin Michele, took video of the encounter that began, she wrote on her Facebook page, when she kissed her girlfriend on the cheek. The driver pulled over and told the two women to get out.
Michele could not be reached for comment, and Uber declined to identify the driver in the video.
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In the profanity-laced clip, Kristin Michele’s shock and anger increases as the driver becomes increasingly vehement in her efforts to toss the women from the car.
Warning: The following video contains explicit language
“Get out!” The driver screams at one point.
“You f--- a---,” Michele replies. “What is wrong with you?”
The driver swats at the smart phone Michele was using to record the interaction.
“This is an Uber ride, I paid you for a service,” Michele says.
The driver replies, “This is my personal car,” and later adds, “I can reject any ride I want to.”
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She’s not correct about that, according to Uber. The San Francisco-based company does allow drivers to evict passengers if the riders are violating its community policies, which include prohibitions against threatening, being rude, or inappropriately touching someone in a vehicle. The company specifically prohibits discrimination, including bias based on sexual orientation, according to its legal policies. Drivers who violate this are booted off the app. Which is what happened to this driver.
"We removed the driver’s access to the app as soon as we were made aware of this incident,” the company said in a statement. The company did not have data on whether other drivers in the Philadelphia region had been barred from the app for similar reasons, a spokesperson said.
The quick response satisfied Michele, according to her Facebook account.
“Uber has been outstanding in dealing with this matter so quickly,” she wrote. “Please do not blame Uber for this woman’s behavior.”