Southwest Airlines has been ordered to send three of its top lawyers into ‘religious freedom’ training which will be conducted by a conservative Christian advocacy group that opposes LGBTQ rights and lobbies government organizations to make abortion illegal.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) was chosen by Trump-appointed right-wing district judge Brantley Starr in a court order issued on Tuesday that found against Southwest in an ongoing case brought by ex-flight attendant Charlene Carter.
Cater was a long-serving flight attendant at the Dallas-based carrier until she was terminated in 2017 over allegations of workplace bullying that surrounded her ‘pro life’ abortion campaigning on social media.
Southwest sacked Carter for breaching its civility rules and social media policy, but a federal jury found that the airline had unlawfully discriminated against her and failed to accommodate her sincerely held religious beliefs.
Following the guilty verdict against Southwest, Judge Starr awarded Carter $810,180 in compensation and backpay and ruled that the airline must rehire Carter with full seniority and benefits. Southwest is appealing the requirement to rehire Carter.
Judge Starr also ordered Southwest to inform flight attendants that it is not allowed to discriminate against them for expressing their opinion about abortion on social media.
On Tuesday, Judge Starr ruled that rather than telling flight attendants that it is not allowed to discriminate against them, Southwest actually told crew members that it does not discriminate against them.
The actual message Southwest sent to flight attendants was: “The court ordered us to inform that Southwest does not discriminate against our employees for their religious practices and beliefs”.
Southwest did not mention Title VII of the Civil Rights Act in its memo, which the court had wanted the airline to mention.
“Not content with merely inverting the Court’s notice, Southwest also sent a memo to its flight attendants the same, stating that its employees must abide by the types of policies over which Southwest fired Cater and that it believed its firing of Carter was justified because of those policies,” the ruling explained.
Judge Starr suggested that Southwest doesn’t understand that “federal protections for religious freedom override any company civility policy”, so he has ordered three of the airline’s leading attorneys into religious freedom training.
The 8-hour training session will be conducted by the Arizona-based ADF, and Southwest must pay for the trainer’s flights, accommodation and other expenses.
ADF has been involved in a number of high-profile legal cases, including the Supreme Court cases. The organization support anti-LGBTQ policies and opposes abortion rights.
Once the lawyers – Kerrie Forbes, Kevin Minchey, and Chris Maberry – have attended the training session, Southwest will be required to send verbatim a new notice to flight attendants which has been written by the court.
Good. Christians, Whites, and Conservatives are routinely discriminated against because they support religious freedom, support Christian principles, and oppose anti White policies. Normal people are forced to sit through one sided anti White diversity seminars and programs and pro LGBT propaganda. Good on the judge for giving these violators of religious freedom a taste of their own medicine. Conservatives should be pushing for all companies who mandate lgbt and diversity training to also have religious freedom training. If people are allowed to support BLM or support black Nationalism, people must be allowed by employers to publicly support White Lives Matter or White Nationalism on the principle of equitable treatment.
You can try to make the judge seem biased by calling him “Right Wing” but this is about Southwest ignoring a Court order.
Yup. Why oh why do so many left-wing travel bloggers feel the need to inject their politics into literally everything and have to ruin even travel?
And it’s so tedious to see these left wingers not-so-subtly blame every decision that doesn’t go their way on the “Trump-appointed” judge to infer what we know you want to infer. At least just come out and say what you mean instead of this cowardly passive-aggressive approach. But you’ve got the left wing journalism 101 technique down pretty well. Well done. lol
Now, maybe get back to actual non-political travel-related material that might be more useful and fun?
The only thing of interest in this is that Southwest was ordered to do something which seems fairly reasonable and they failed to do it as ordered so the result was an order to seek more education into the matter. If the judge had been Tanya Chutkan or some liberal-appointed judge would they have just let Southwest off the hook on violating someone’s rights?