The Hill ran a very encouraging story last week headlined, “
Southwest to appeal judge’s ‘religious freedom training’ order.”
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Last Monday, Texas U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr entered an order sanctioning Southwest for violating a previous order. The case revolved around the illegal firing of a Southwest flight attendant, who was laid off because she posted a pro-life tweet on her social media. A
jury found Southwest and the flight attendant union were guilty of violating the attendant’s free speech rights and religious liberties, and awarded her $5.1 million dollars, which was later reduced by the judge to $800,000.
As part of the original decision, the judge ordered Southwest to notify all its employees, to make sure they know about their religious freedom rights under Title VII. But Southwest and its lawyers tried to circumvent that order, and instead of following the judge’s instructions, sent a watered-down note to employees implying Southwest had been found innocent, and failed to mention their religious liberty rights or Title VII.
So the judge sanctioned Southwest and included two interesting provisions. First, the judge ordered Southwest’s three lawyers to attend “religious freedom education” training provided by the Alliance Defending Freedom. The Hill described the ADF as “a Christian conservative legal advocacy group,” a sign of how upset that part of the order has made liberals.
Liberals are the ones who force conservatives to go to reeducation training, not the other way around, silly.
The judge also wrote out an exact notice that he ordered Southwest to send to its employees, to make sure they get the correct instructions this time.
So of course, instead of complying with a little training and a one-paragraph notice that could be emailed to employees at zero cost, Southwest is spending tens of thousands of dollars on appealing the sanctions order and the underlying judgment. “We plan to appeal the recent court order and are in the process of appealing the underlying judgment to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals,” Southwest said in a statement Wednesday.
Good luck. The Fifth Circuit was reliably pro-freedom during the pandemic, issuing some of the best anti-mandate orders in the country. District judges have a lot of freedom to sanction parties that violate orders. It could have been much worse, including jail time for contempt. A little training and a note to employees seems like the minimum a judge could do when a company refuses to follow its orders.
As to Southwest’s appeal of the underlying judgment, it is well known that appeals of jury verdicts are the most difficult types of appeals to win. Appellate judges hate disturbing all the work that a jury invested in listening to witnesses and reviewing evidence and so forth. So I don’t predict the appeal will be well taken. I predict that the flight attendant’s lawyers will soon be getting even more of their fees paid by Southwest. But we’ll see!
Judge Starr was a Trump appointee. So.
Another day, another Trump indictment; triumph as man wins Canadian women's powerlifting contest; Biden announces generous $2M Hawaii aid package and sends Ukraine $200M; woke education; and lot more.
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