Trans woman turned away from hotel because 'people like you can't stay here'

A trans woman says that a hotel in Atlanta turned her away after seeing that the gender marker on her ID didnt match her appearance, with the front desk worker telling her that people like you cant stay here, despite her having booked in advance. Now shes speaking out about the potential housing discrimination she faced.
Alabama native Sadie Vice traveled to Atlanta on March 3, 2025, to visit friends and take part in a charity show to raise funds for a friend with cancer. She booked a room with Extended Stay America Atlanta-Northlake via Expedia.

She traveled all day that day, getting a ride with her father from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham, where she took a Greyhound bus from Birmingham to Atlanta. After hours on the bus, she took a Lyft from the bus station to the Extended Stay.

After that day of traveling, Vice was ready to relax in a hotel room. But instead of relaxation, she faced discrimination.
She went from the Lyft to the check-in desk with her reservation information, but she was turned away when she tried to check-in. Vice says that the agent at the desk first claimed that they didnt have any rooms. Confused, Vice said there must have been a mistake because she made a reservation and nobody had contacted her to cancel it. When she produced her reservation number, the agent looked at it and asked to see her ID. Sadie says that the agent, who wasnt wearing a name badge, then told her, Your reservation was canceled because people like you cant stay here.

The desk agent then noted that Vice had another reservation at the same Extended Stay America later in that month, from March 25 to 28. The agent told her that she needed to cancel that reservation because, as Sadie puts it, people like me couldnt stay there.
By the time she was turned away, Vice had traveled over 200 miles. She was told that there was no manager available and that she needed to find a new place to stay. While she considered pushing the issue at the time, she told LGBTQ Nation , They were not going to let me stay there, period.
Born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Vice completed her full medical transition back in 2010. She moved around the Southeast, spending time in Florida and Georgia, and earned the title of Miss Trans Atlanta in 2017. In 2020, she became extremely ill, first with COVID-19 and then with cancer. Vice has since returned to Tuscaloosa, and after battling her illnesses, she went on to become Miss Trans Alabama in 2024.
While she was able to have her correct gender listed on her state ID cards during her time in Georgia and Florida, Alabamas restrictive ID laws require gender markers to match the one assigned at birth. This, of course, creates a mismatch between Vices ID and her gender presentation.
A few days after being turned away from the Extended Stay America in Atlanta and after multiple of Vices friends left complaints about the discrimination through Google reviews and the companys contact page, a man identifying himself as Edward, the assistant general manager for the Extended Stay America, Atlanta-Northlake location, called and left a voicemail for Sadie on March 5.
In the message, Edward said that the hotel was contacted by their corporate office about Vice being denied service. While Sadie talked to a woman at the front desk, Edward claimed that he was working at the front desk that day and that the staff didnt remember any guests checking in with any reservations. He also said that he remembered her name because it was a reservation that I canceled because we didnt have any rooms available.
Vice had made her reservations with Extended Stay America, Atlanta-Northlake on February 15 through Expedia. That booking was confirmed, and she says she never received any notice of cancellation prior to her arrival. Moreover, it would be strange if no one checked in to the Extended Stay that day, especially considering that Edward claimed that they were fully booked.
Edward said that he checked their security camera footage but that nobody had tried to check in during that time window. He suggested that she might not have had the right location or that he might have been on a break when she showed up.
In a separate voicemail left on March 23, Edward suggested Vice spoke with another guest rather than an employee of Extended Stay America, pointing out that an employee should have been wearing a name badge.
Some of these explanations offered by the assistant manager seem contradictory. He suggested Vice went to the wrong location, but he also said in the first voicemail that he remembered canceling her reservation. Vices Lyft receipt, which LGBTQ Nation has viewed, shows that she was taken to the address of Extended Stay America Atlanta-Northlake.
Also, if she had talked to a guest and not an employee like Edward suggested, its not clear how they would have been able to pull up her information and see that she had a second reservation for late March.
Fortunately, after being turned away by Extended Stay America despite booking in advance, she was able to get a room at the nearby Days Inn and performed at the charity show as planned. But moving to a different hotel was a stressful experience that meant spending more on a last-minute room, and nobody should have to suffer being rejected over bigotry.
It is terrible anyone can have their hotel reservation canceled without notice over what body part may or may not be in between their legs, Vice said.
While some of the fault in this situation appears to fall with individuals at the hotel, theres also a growing systemic problem that has resulted from recent political changes. People are feeling emboldened to speak their anti-trans thoughts out loud.
Moreover, the situation shows how anti-trans laws including those that restrict trans peoples ability to get correct IDs lead to real-world discrimination. Vice says that the agent only confirmed she was being turned away after looking at her Alabama ID, which lists her as male. Vice only moved back to Alabama to deal with health issues resulting from her cancer treatment, and the tradeoff for caring for her health is living in a state that wont let her gender marker match her gender presentation. Those rules put trans people at risk for discrimination and violence by having their IDs out them to strangers.
This is the world we live in now, Vice said, citing the current presidential administration.

Places like that should be fined into bankruptcy

The new government applauds this shit.

We are going to see a lot more of this, and every Trump voter is to blame, along with everyone who didnt vote

bro imagine denying business and potential money making just because of your shitty ass beliefs.

you deserve bankruptcy at that point...

bro imagine denying business and potential money making just because of your shitty ass beliefs.

you deserve bankruptcy at that point...

These people are so hateful that they will see being bankrupt and homeless over turning away people they are bigoted to as a win and people will cheer for their bravery.

Should be a clear cut discrimination violation but it's Atlanta

We are going to see a lot more of this, and every Trump voter is to blame, along with everyone who didnt vote

Atlanta is supposed to be one of the nicer cities in the dirty south

I mean
https://www.yelp.com/biz/extended-stay-america-northlake-atlanta

This place is almost completely 1 stars. I dunno why anyone would even opt to go here.