On May 31, 2023, 28-year United Airlines flight attendant Ruben Sanchez killed time in the jumpseat on a Los Angeles – Cleveland redeye chatting theology with another Catholic crewmember. Pride Month started the next day, and Sanchez remarks that the Church “will never believe men give birth or bless same‑sex marriage.”
You know, as Catholics, we’re not really supposed to be observing Pride. The church will never believe that men give birth, women have penises or that the church should bless same-sex marriages because marriage is a sacrament, and it’s not meant for two men or two women or three people or whatever.
A passenger (or someone claiming to be one) complained on Twitter, reported Sanchez said “I hate all black people,” and “I am proudly anti-trans.” Sanchez denies this. Sanchez has also been openly gay.
The airline didn’t substantiate the allegations, but trawled Sanchez’s twitter account and found a small percentage of his content showed “lack of dignity, respect and professionalism.” So on January 8, 2024, the airline fired him for violating its social media policy. Initially his union, AFA-CWA, told him he’d done nothing wrong – but decided not to defend him.
Over the summer, when a judge refused to throw out his case, I reached out to AFA and a spokesperson offered,
Since this is pending litigation we’re not going to comment on this specific case. But to be clear, our Union defends both first amendment rights and a harassment free workplace.
Sanchez went public with a GoFundMe to help him sue Unite, and the union sent a memo to all flight attendants reminding them to keep posts “mindful and respectful” citing what happened to Sanchez. Funded by Twitter, he sued. He argued that United punished religious speech while giving more leeway to employees who posted “progressive” hot‑takes.
I wrote at the time that his claim survived dismissal that he had a decent claim against United for religious bias, and that discovery in the case would be key to demonstrating bias. I suggested that a settlement was likely to avoid embarrassin revelations in discovery.
That’s exactly what has happened. Twitter shares that a settlement was reached with both United and the AFA-CWA union.
We are pleased that X was able to help Ruben Sanchez amicably resolve his dispute with United Airlines and the Association of Flight Attendants. X stands firm in its commitment to defend free speech on its platform. https://t.co/jwSjfvRD9l
— Global Government Affairs (@GlobalAffairs) December 11, 2025
(HT: Live and Let’s Fly)
I am so tired of companies believing that employees can not hold personal beliefs or opinions. Then punishing an employee because a customer has a different opinion or belief and feels harmed that not everyone agrees with them. Unless an employee can be shown to be neglecting their job, their belief system should not be questioned.
Good for him, glad he won. Explaining religious doctrine should not be a reason to fire someone. Not sure why vets get a day and gays get a month.
Might need to relook at this post. A few spelling errors…..
“him sue Unite”
“avoid embarrassin”
Impressed that Gary found a story that includes his typical union-bashing with a religious freedom angle while simultaneously supporting a gay man who happened to speak against trans people. That’s peak VFTW, folks. Gold medal in the ‘culture war’ Olympics. A ‘Mad Libs’ of inflammatory topics and buzzwords. Also, mad lib(eral)s, too. I guess ‘outrage’ leading to ‘settlements’ is gonna become the entire economy soon enough. Now, where’s our resident bigots for their most hate-filled ‘hot takes’ on any of the above. *takes out popcorn*
Let me get this straight. – no pun. But wasn’t the fearless corporate leader right in fashion with his FAs wearing ID that defines who they are and we’d better address them as such. Way more important than running a safe ship. All of the pandering was a corporate knee jerk reaction.
Never post things on your own X of FB accounts. . Set up a “Alternative Person” Use the name of a long dead relative that died in 1950 with a different last name and use that. Graduate from a high school other than the one you actually did, same for college, work in a dead end jub (Wal-mart) make friends with Public officials first then you can link to their friends. (then later drop the Public people NEVER make friends with Relatives.
now you can say what you want to who you want FREEDOM of speach and it does not get back to your employer .
Blows me away when such an ignorant and stupid airline and union do not understand the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights only to be FORCED to do the right thing by lawsuit! How about you organizations just support the rights of your employees without all of this???? Bet it’s wayyyyyy cheaper too!
@Paulz — The typos add flavor. Like, this way when someone accuses Gary of using AI, he can have plausible deniability… like, a LLM wouldn’t make those obvious spelling errors (unless it were told to in the prompt… ‘make it seem human… aka… flawed.’)
I am appalled that the union took his union dues and did not help represent him against United Airlines. In doing that they show that they are tightly tied to United management. Maybe that is the reason that they don’t have current amendments to the union contract that would pay the flight attendants comparable to flight attendants at other airlines. In other words, the union is just shilling for management.
If he wasn’t bringing his employer into his tweets and wasn’t threatening a specific person than his employer has no business being in his business. This is Thought Crime territory.
One for the win column.
Not straight people should be moved to a seperate plannet where they can be.. as weird as they want. He is Catholic and he is not straight, what is wrong with him? It is disgusting.
Gay and Catholic. Talk about needing therapy. Typical American peasant mentality, love your abuser.
That’s why we have Orange King Joffrey running the place into the toilet.
Gary now that there is no current lawsuit, you should reach out to the union again for comment. I’d be curious what new excuse they cook up to avoid accountability.
It’s ridiculous subjecting Christian Valued Families to dude crew members in dresses and fake tits.
Families should not be subjected to this sort of BS by tranny crew members much less gay crew members advertising their damn husbands, with a flip.
Airlines are running a transportation businesses not a fricking gay bar. One for the Universal values here and other non-universa Christians with traditional values, so good for this F/A.
To all the conservatives/family values types on here celebrating this FA’s win, hopefully you were also speaking up to defend those who were fired for not joining in the Charlie Kirk lovefest when he was murdered.
Valuing free speech means you defend everyone’s right to an opinion equally. Anything else is just high-fiving when your side “wins”…certainly not celebrating the innate value of freedom of speech.
@KidStarA — I wish shame and hypocrisy were effective, but, no. Assuming you were referring to those like @Michael Mainello above, who cheer for this (mostly because it was trans-bashing and seemingly pro-Christianity), but will not be consistent about defending others (speaking their mind about that flawed individual who was murdered), as you described. Some pretend to care about ‘free speech,’ yet when anyone says anything they don’t like, they push to censor and ban others. (I’ve received those calls from some on here.) I think that’s pathetic. If they can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen. Engage or ignore. This is the way.
@1990 – Hey I see you are throwing out your strawmen arguments again. Of course we can disagree, the problem in Charlie Kirks case is that most that disagreed with him lied about his positions. The same can be said about those that disagree with current president or others. I support your right to speak and voice your position. I also support your right to look like a fool, for which you excel. Happy Holidays.