A Texas District Judge ordered Southwest Airlines to send three of its lawyers for religious freedom training after they fired a flight attendant who expressed religious views on social media.
District Judge Brantley Starr ordered on Monday that Southwest has to organize religious freedom training and send a short notice to all its flight attendants regarding the protections on religious speech, after a lawsuit filed by flight attendant Charlene Carter.
Ms. Carter was fired by Southwest after expressing her views on abortion on social media. Southwest said this violated its “civility policy.”
The Judge said in his opinion that “Southwest needs to understand, when communicating with its employees, that federal protections for religious freedom override any company civility policy. The rule of law and the republican form of government guarantee no less.”
Ms. Carter initially filed a lawsuit after she was fired and the jury found that Southwest had violated Ms. Carter’s protections of religious speech, granted by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The court then ordered at that time that Ms. Carter should be reinstated, that is prohibited for Southwest to discriminate on religious beliefs, and that the company should inform all flight attendants that “under Title VII, [Southwest] may not discriminate against Southwest flight attendants for their religious practice or beliefs,” according to the court’s final opinion document published on Monday.
Instead, the recent opinion says, Southwest sent a notice to its flight attendants saying that “[t]he court [] ordered us to inform you that Southwest does not discriminate against our Employees for their religious practices and beliefs.”
In other words, Southwest inverted the court’s intent.
Southwest also sent a memo to its flight attendants telling them to abide by the policies that fired Ms. Carter.
After that, Ms. Carter moved for sanctions.
The Judge also wrote in order to more vividly illustrate Southwest’s course of action,
“It’s hard to see how Southwest could have violated the notice requirement more. Take these modified historical and movie anecdotes. After God told Adam, ‘[Y]ou must not eat from the tree [in the middle of the garden],’ imagine Adam telling God, ‘I do not eat from the tree in the middle of the garden’—while an apple core rests at his feet. Or where Gandalf bellows, ‘You shall not pass,’ the Balrog muses, ‘I do not pass,’ while strolling past Gandalf on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm.”
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