The incident happened in Detroit, Michigan
A US woman is suing Lyft after a driver claimed that she was ‘too big’ to fit into his car.
Rapper Dajua Blanding, who goes by the stage name Dank Demoss, revealed that she was refused service from the taxi company earlier this month and took to social media to footage that she’d recorded from the incident.
In the clip the rider can be heard telling the 36-year-old rapper that he doesn’t believe she will be able to fit into the back of his Mercedes Benz sedan.
“I got no space at all, my car is small,” he can be heard saying in the clip, to which Blanding replies: “I can fit in this car.”
The driver doubles down on his stance, adding: “No believe me you can’t, so… I’m sorry.”
Blanding then queries what will happen to her money, with the driver explaining that he will cancel the trip so she can be refunded. She then asks the driver once again if he’s refusing service due to her size, to which he replies: “Yeah, you need to order a bigger car.”
The driver then bizarrely states that he also has ‘very tired tires’ as another reason why he cannot take her.
“What I got to do with your tires?” Blanding responds.
“@lyft what yall [sic] got to say about this yall driver discriminated against me,” she added in the caption on Instagram. “I JUST FEEL LIKE YALL TREAT BIG PPLE LIKE S**T LIKE WE DONT BELONG HERE.”
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Blanding has since decided to take legal action against Lyft over her experience, confirming to Fox that she had hired two lawyers and was planning to sue for discrimination.
Michigan, where the rapper lives, is the only state in the US which has a law preventing weight discrimination.
“I’ve been in cars smaller than that. I just want them to know that it hurt my feelings,” she explained to the outlet.
“I knew that it was illegal and I knew that it was wrong,” Jonathan Marko, one of her attorneys, added.
“It would be no different than a driver pulling up and saying, ‘I don’t want to have Black people in my car or I don’t want to have Christians in my car.’ It’s the same, under the law it’s the same.”
Lyft has since responded to the story, telling Fox 2 Detroit the company ‘unequivocally condemns all forms of discrimination’.
“We believe in a community where everyone is treated with equal respect and mutual kindness. Our community guidelines and terms of service explicitly prohibit harassment or discrimination,” the statement added.
