United Airlines in 2024 agreed to stop hiring employees based on the color of their skin after the U.S. Department of Labor got involved.
The company should have been as concerned about religious discrimination. Jintana Hampton, a Christian flight attendant who worked for the airline for 28 years, did not want to take the COVID-19 vaccine and requested a religious accommodation. United Airlines fired her in 2022.
Hampton filed a lawsuit over her termination and the company’s refusal to participate in religious accommodation protocol concerning the vaccine.
United Airlines moved to dismiss the lawsuit, a request the court rejected. The case moves forward.
Liberty Counsel (LC), Hampton’s legal counsel, wants a court to find that the company violated state and federal law. Hampton wants either her job back or back and front pay, compensatory and punitive damages, and attorney’s fees and costs.
While United claims her firing was over her missing a company-wide, administrative deadline for religious-exemption requests, that deadline was later blocked by a federal injunction in a separate case. As the lawsuit notes, Hampton’s exemption request was actually timely as she was under and met a separate deadline for employees on medical leave at the time of the mandate.
The court noted the CEO’s public anti-religion statements and contended they were “kind of top-down animus directed squarely at religious objectors” and reflects possible “intentional discrimination at this stage.”
Wow. Who else predicts United Airlines will settle the lawsuit?
Photo credit: By N509FZ – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, link
