Charlene Carter—the 26‑year Southwest flight attendant I first wrote about in 2020 was fired by the company for blasting the flight‑attendants’ union over the Women’s March—just had her jury verdict upheld at the appellate level.
Carter was fired in 2017 after criticizing her union, TWU Local 556, for spending crewmember dues advocating for political causes like abortion.
- She criticized the union’s President and other Southwest flight attendants union officials for spending union dues attending the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, D.C. in Facebook private messages, and argued for a recall effort against union leadership.
- She was called in to Southwest HR and fired for sending “hostile and graphic” anti-abortion messages to the union’s president, which the airline deemed to violate its civility rules. She sued the airline and union for violating her religious liberty (speaking out against the union’s support for abortion, in part using her funds).
- At the jury trial that she ultimately won, the union e-mails were presented which called for “targeted assassinations” of flight attendant critics of the union and which made fun of Carter for her inability to stop her money from being spent on the causes she opposed.
Southwest was ordered to tell flight attendants that federal law requires that they not “not discriminate against Southwest flight attendants for their religious practices and beliefs.” The airline did not do that, instead saying that it “does not discriminate.” Southwest was held in contempt, and ordered 3 lawyers for the airline to completed 8 hours of religious liberty compliance training offered by the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom.
On Thursday the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that she was improperly fired by Southwest but they didn’t support the District Court’s remedies. According to the court,
- Southwest wasn’t out to purge pro‑life Christians. Carter had no proof her faith, by itself, cost her the job. (The court reversed the jury on that point.)
- However Southwest can’t fire someone for sending religiously‑motivated posts unless it can show a substantial business cost. The airline never tried to accommodate her religious beliefs. The jury’s verdict in her favor stands.
The court’s 63‑page opinion lays out the difference between firing someone for what they believe (usually verboten) and firing them for how they act on that belief (sometimes okay, sometimes not). The judges vacated the district court’s orders regarding Southwest’s future conduct and requirement for three in‑house lawyers to attend Alliance Defending Freedom training in response to civil contempt.
Carter keeps her $800,000 award against Southwest. She also keeps her $300,000 punitive award against TWU 556. And she’s entitled to reinstatement and back‑pay. The union still owes a penalty for religious freedom violations.
Carter received free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. According to Foundation President Mark Mix,
This decision is another victory for Charlene Carter. The Court of Appeals has affirmed that both TWU union bosses and Southwest Airlines violated Carter’s legal rights when the union instigated her termination by Southwest in response to voicing her opposition to union political activism, including union activities that violated her religious beliefs.
We are proud to help Charlene defend her legal rights. But her case exposes a bigger injustice in American labor law: that workers can be forced to accept union ‘representation’ they oppose and, adding insult to injury, can be forced to pay fees to that union. It is outrageous that, even though the court confirmed that the TWU union and Southwest violated Carter’s legal rights, Carter is still forced to subsidize TWU union bosses or else be fired by Southwest. We hope Carter’s victory today will prompt an overdue conversation about how coercive union boss power infringes on the rights of millions of hardworking Americans.
Southwest could still ask the full Fifth Circuit for rehearing en banc, and either side could appeal to the Supreme Court, but the Court takes very few petitions and hasn’t shown any appetite to reopen either Title VII religious standards (it just did that in Groff) or Railway Labor Act issues. Southwest is likely to cut the check and be happy their lawyers don’t have to attend religious liberty training.
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