JERSEY CITY -- A lawsuit filed by a transgender man who said he was threatened and harassed by Jersey City police after being arrested remains on track for trial now that the state Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal filed by police.

"It gives our client the opportunity now to have his trial and get in front of a jury and have this tried on the merits," attorney Deborah Mains said today of her client, Shakeem Malik Holmes.

Holmes sued the Jersey City Police Department in 2014 over an August 2012 incident in which he was subjected to "demeaning, insulting and threatening comments," because he is a transgender man, according to the suit.

Holmes had been arrested on a shoplifting charge, which was later dismissed, New Jersey Law Journal reported. He had already legally changed his name from Malika Sakinah Holmes and was in the process of transitioning from female to male when he was at the police department's Bureau of Criminal Identification that day.

In the lawsuit, Holmes said that over the course of two hours, police officers stared at him and made derogatory comments while he was placed in a holding cell for women instead of a separate cell.

One sergeant said: "Next time you come in here and you want to be treated like a man, I'll put my fist down your throat like a f------ man," the lawsuit states. Several police officer referred to Holmes as "it," called his situation "bulls---," and remarked "so that's a f------ girl?" the suit alleges.

The lawsuit was dismissed by a Hudson County Superior Court judge in 2015, but Mains appealed and an appellate court reinstated the suit earlier this year. The appellate court ruled the trial judge erred by ruling the alleged comments did not rise to the level of severe or pervasive per laws against discrimination (LAD) violations.

The appellate court panel said the trial judge was wrong to apply the same higher proof standard used in LAD cases that involve religious harassment. But after the suit was reinstated, police petitioned the state Supreme Court and sought to appeal the appellate court's ruling. On Oct. 20, the Supreme Court denied the police petition.

Mains, of Costello & Mains in Mount Laurel, said police treatment of Holmes was "disgusting." She said a trial date has not yet been set, nor has a next hearing in the matter.