Two United Airlines flight attendants have sued the airline for discrimination, saying that they were discriminated against because of their religion, age, race and appearance.
Filed on Oct. 25 at the Los Angeles County Superior Court, the lawsuit was filed by flight attendants Dawn Todd and Darby Quezada. Todd and Quezada alleged that they were excluded from the chartered Los Angeles Dodgers flights because they didn’t match up to the “visual image” set, according to NPR.
Although they’ve both worked with United Airlines for over 15 years, Todd, who is Black, and Quezada, who is Mexican, Black and Jewish, argue that the airline purposely removed them to replace them with “young, white, and predominantly blond/blue-eyed” women who were less-experienced, according to the lawsuit.
The women were also subjected to discriminatory comments. According to the lawsuit, Quezada, alongside Todd, was referred to as the “flight’s maid” and was told to stop speaking Spanish with a player from the Dodgers team because “we are in America.” Quezada was also on the receiving end of anti-semitic remarks.
Meanwhile, Todd was retaliated against by United Airlines for complaining about the discriminatory choice to exclude her and Quezada along with reporting the racism and ageism she was faced with.
“Plaintiffs had the necessary experience and qualifications… but their requests were dismissed and rejected because Plaintiffs were not white,” the lawsuit said per NPR. “This demotion is forcing Todd and other minority flight attendants to either lose compensation awaiting ‘random’ selection or to quit the program entirely.”
The recent lawsuit is not the first discrimination lawsuit that United Airlines has been faced with. In 2020, the airline was sued by two female attendants for discrimination similar to the lawsuit by Todd and Quezada.
The women alleged that, on flights for the NFL and the MLB, they were excluded from the “dedicated crews” that were also made of “predominantly young, white blond/blue-eyed” women. The women, Kim Guillory and Sharon Tesler, were also victims of discriminatory remarks.
“While we cannot comment on this ongoing litigation, the flight attendants included in our sports team charter program are largely representative of our overall flight attendant population in regards to age and race,” said United Airlines per USA Today at the time of the lawsuit. “Importantly, flight attendant eligibility to work a charter flight is based solely on performance and attendance and has nothing to do with age, race or gender.”
