Southwest Denied Further Pause of Religious Training for Lawyers

Southwest Airlines Co. was denied a further stay of a Texas federal judge’s order requiring three of its in-house lawyers to attend religious liberty training for failing to comply with a pro-life employee’s award in her discrimination lawsuit.

The airline will have until Sept. 26 to see that the lawyers get training through the Alliance Defending Freedom, the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas said Thursday. Southwest failed to show why an administrative stay of enforcement of the training and a related requirement was necessary while the airline pursues its appeal with the Fifth Circuit of its jury trial loss to Charlene Carter, the court said.

Southwest’s First Amendment rights aren’t violated by the sanctions he issued, Starr said. That the training is to be conducted by the ADF, which the airline described as an “ideological organization,” is “more of a gripe than a legal objection,” Judge Brantley Starr said.

Starr said Southwest failed to seek a Fifth Circuit stay of his Dec. 5 award of injunctive relief to Carter before choosing not to comply with portions of the relief. Under Supreme Court precedent, “unstayed” injunctive relief must be complied with promptly, yet Southwest instead decided to flout the relief he ordered by issuing a notice to its flight attendants effectively stating that it doesn’t need to comply with Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act if the nation’s primary job bias law conflicts with the airline’s civility policies, the judge said.

The court on Aug. 17 had granted a 30-day stay from the religious liberty training order to allow briefing on Southwest’s Aug. 16 emergency motion for an administrative stay pending appeal. The briefing showed that a stay pending appeal isn’t warranted, the new ruling said.

Southwest’s argument that it substantially complied with the original injunctive relief was off-base, Starr said. It issued a notice to flight attendants saying the court “ordered us to inform you that Southwest does not discriminate against our Employees for their religious practices and beliefs” without mentioning federal anti-bias law, instead of a notice stating that the airline may not discriminate on religious grounds, as required by the injunctive relief award, he said.

And it separately issued a memorandum to flight attendants indicating that Carter’s firing was justified because Carter didn’t adhere to Southwest policies, the judge said.

The court rejected Southwest’s contention that ordering the lawyers involved to undergo training as a sanction for the airlines’ noncompliance with the injunctive relief is tantamount to a “impermissible criminal contempt sanction.” Southwest cited just one case, which was limited to the unique facts there, and the required religious liberty training was “expressly connected” to the airline’s noncompliance, the court said.

The ADF was chosen because its understanding of religious liberty has been demonstrated by the “multiple Supreme Court cases” it has won on the issue in recent years, the judge said. The group has also conducted similar training in the past, he said.

The training will help Carter and other Southwest flight attendants by giving the airline a better understanding of religious freedom, the court said. And such training won’t hurt Southwest, the court said.

In fact, the briefing on the motion for an administrative stay showed the training is needed more “now than ever before,” Starr said.

Carter was fired after it was reported that she sent several Facebook messages denouncing her union’s participation in the Women’s March. The jury awarded her more than $5 million against Southwest and the union in July 2022, but Starr later cut the verdict to $600,000. He also awarded her $210,000 in back pay and interest and required Southwest to reinstate her as a flight attendant.

The airline’s low chances of overturning the verdict on appeal was another reason favoring denial of an administrative stay, Starr said.

National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation Inc. and Pryor & Bruce represented Carter. Reed Smith LLP; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP; and Ryan Law Partners LLP represented Southwest.

The case is Carter v. Transport Workers Union of Am. Local 556, N.D. Tex., No. 3:17-cv-02278, 8/31/23.