Southwest Paid A Flight Attendant Nearly $1 Million — Now It Has To Tell Cabin Crew Why

Southwest Airlines already had to reinstate flight attendant Charlene Carter and helped pay a $946,102.87 judgment. The airline was also ordered by a court to tell employees it may not legally discriminate. Instead, they put out a message say the airline “does not discriminate.”

In other words, the airline put out a statement saying they do not do the thing a court found they’d done, instead of letting employees know that discrimination is against the law. The court was not pleased! And they’ve finally agreed to fix it.

$1 Million Payout After Union Conspired To Have A Flight Attendant Fired

In April I wrote about Southwest Airlines flight attendant Charlene Carter getting her job back and collecting $946,102.87 after Southwest fired her at the urging of her union.

The money was paid. She was reinstated. But there was still one piece left to the case. Southwest had been held in contempt for changing two words in a court-ordered notice to its flight attendants.

The court had ordered Southwest to say that it “may not discriminate” against flight attendants for their religious practices and beliefs. Southwest instead told employees that it “does not discriminate.”

• “May not” tells employees what the law prohibits.
• “Does not” asserts that Southwest hadn’t done the very thing a jury had just found it liable for doing.

Now U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr has ordered Southwest to send flight attendants a statement acknowledging that the airline isn’t permitted to discriminate based on religion. Once it does, the contempt finding will be dissolved and a nine-year fight that started with graphic Facebook messages about abortion, produced a $5.1 million jury verdict, became a dispute over whether a federal judge could force Southwest’s lawyers to take religious-liberty classes will finally be over.

How A Fight Over Union Politics Got A Flight Attendant Fired

Charlene Carter began working for Southwest in 1996. She had resigned from Transport Workers Union Local 556 but remained a “nonmember objector,” required to pay fees because the union is the ‘exclusive bargaining representative’ at the airline.

She was strongly anti-union and a pro-life Christian. She opposed the union leadership, supported a recall effort of officers, and objected to the union’s involvement in the 2017 Women’s March, where Planned Parenthood was a prominent partner.

After the union president and others attended the march, Carter sent the union president private Facebook messages containing graphic abortion images and videos. She publicly criticized her. The president reported the flight attendant to the airline, which investigated and fired her under its social media, workplace bullying and harassment policies. An arbitrator later concluded that Southwest had just cause to fire her. Carter sued Southwest and the union for religious discrimination.

The Jury Found Southwest And The Union Liable

In 2022 a federal jury found in Carter’s favor. The original verdict of about $5 million (80% against Southwest, 20% the union) exceeded federal limits. After back pay and interest, Carter ultimately received $946,102.87. She was also reinstated.

The union is legally prohibited from causing or attempting to cause an employer to discriminate. Southwest fired her, but the union instigated it pretty blatantly.

Effectively, the union weaponized Carter’s religious and anti-union criticism by reporting it through official channels to Southwest, trying to cause religiously discriminatory discipline, treating her worse because of her religious expression, failing to accommodate that religious expression, retaliating under the Railway Labor Act, and breaching its duty to represent her fairly.

Southwest Paid The Money But Fought The Conduct Remedy

The airline rehired Carter and paid her, but the court said they had to change their conduct and tell other employees what rights they had.

The judge prohibited Southwest and the union from discriminating against flight attendants for religious beliefs and practices, including expression on social media and views concerning abortion. He also ordered them to distribute the verdict and judgment and tell flight attendants:

Under Title VII, Southwest may not discriminate against Southwest flight attendants for their religious practices and beliefs, including—but not limited to—those expressed on social media and those concerning abortion.

Southwest distributed the court documents. But its accompanying message said that the court had ordered the airline to tell employees that Southwest “does not discriminate” based on religious practices and beliefs.

The airline also sent an internal memo maintaining that Carter’s messages were “inappropriate, harassing, and offensive,” violated company policies, and that Southwest was extremely disappointed with the verdict and planned to appeal.

Southwest Will Finally Say What The Court Ordered Them To Say

Southwest had the right to appeal, but not to rewrite the court’s instruction so that a notice about what federal law prohibited became a claim of innocence.

The judge held Southwest in civil contempt. He ordered a new notice sent that used the corrected language, and ordered at least eight hours of religious liberty training for three Southwest lawyers, to be conducted by Alliance Defending Freedom.

Alliance Defending Freedom is a prominent conservative Christian legal organization. And the Fifth Circuit held that the judge went too far with this. That court agreed Southwest acted with contempt, but civil contempt is supposed to coerce compliance not punish, which is how this was viewed. (And the three lawyers involved hadn’t been the ones to fire Carter, and there was no showing of religious animus on their part.)

The appeals court also vacated the judge’s broader permanent injunction against religious discrimination as vague and overbroad.

• Southwest was right that the judge couldn’t use civil contempt to impose punitive ideological training.

• The judge was right that Southwest hadn’t complied with the original notice requirement.

• The appropriate remedy was exactly the one Southwest had resisted in the first place – sending employees a corrected statement.

I do not like compelled speech one bit. And the worst actor here was clearly the union, which tried to get the flight attendant fired in retaliation for her beliefs and activism against union leadership, which was based on her religious beliefs.

Southwest tried to weasel its way out of literal compliance with the court’s order, parsing words, and the court wouldn’t have it. On Tuesday, though, Southwest agreed to tell flight attendants that federal law prohibits the company from discriminating based on religion. Distributing the statement ends the contempt order and the case.