Southwest Seeks Fast Review, Stay of Religious Training Sanction

Southwest Airlines Co. asked the Fifth Circuit to quickly hear its appeal of a federal judge’s order requiring three of the airline’s in-house lawyers to attend religious liberty training or to pause the training requirement until the court decides the appeal.

The development came after US District Court for the Northern District of Texas Judge Brantley Starr on Aug. 31 denied Southwest’s request to extend a stay of enforcement of the training. Starr imposed the training as a sanction for the airline’s failure to comply with relief awarded to flight attendant Charlene Carter in her religious discrimination lawsuit against Southwest and her union. Starr had initially ordered the attorneys to complete at least eight hours of religious freedom training through the Alliance Defending Freedom by Aug. 28, but later pushed the date back to Sept. 26.

Southwest appealed Starr’s sanctions order, as it had Carter’s win in the underlying case, and those appeals remain pending.

With the Sept. 26 deadline fast approaching, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit should “hold oral argument and decide this motion before that time,” the airline said in a filing Wednesday. Alternatively, the appeals court should enter an administrative stay and decide the appeal “on the ordinary stay-motion briefing schedule,” Southwest said.

Starr issued the sanction after finding that Southwest flouted injunctive relief he ordered after Carter prevailed during a jury trial. The injunctive relief required the airline to inform its other flight attendants that it wasn’t permitted to discriminate against them on the basis of religion.

In rejecting on Aug. 31 Southwest’s request for a further stay of the training sanction while the appeal is pending, the judge rejected the airline’s various arguments, including that it had substantially complied with the injunctive relief order.

‘Unprecedented’ Order

Starr’s sanctions order was “extraordinary and unprecedented,” Southwest told the Fifth Circuit. And Carter’s jury verdict, which initially awarded her more than $5 million before being reduced by Starr to $610,000 and $200,000 in back pay, “is likely to be overturned,” the airline said.

Sanctions also weren’t warranted because Southwest told Starr it was willing to comply with the underlying judgment, the airline said. The sanctions order “exceeds the scope of its civil-contempt power and” punishes Southwest for exercising its First Amendment rights by expressing its disagreement with “a decision it believes is wrong in a developing area of law,” the airline said.

The ADF is an “ideological advocacy group,” Southwest said. Starr never explained why he ordered training through that organization rather than just Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act training, it said.

Civil-contempt sanctions are allowed only to secure compliance with a court order or to compensate for harm caused by for noncompliance, Southwest said. Because Starr found that it failed to comply with relief awarded to Carter under Title VII, requiring training through the ADF “isn’t the least-restrictive means of securing” Southwest’s Title VII compliance, the airline said.

The only permissible sanctions were requiring it to correct the noncompliance Starr found with the injunctive relief order and awarding Carter related attorneys’ fees, Southwest said.

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

The case is Carter v. Local 556, Transport Workers Union of Am., 5th Cir., No. 23-10008, motion filed 9/6/23.