- A federal appeals court has reinstated a lawsuit against Mesa Air Group, alleging racial profiling of two Muslim men who claimed their flight was canceled based on their ethnicity.
- The court’s unanimous decision rejected the notion that there was no disparate treatment, emphasizing that Mesa’s actions could potentially violate federal civil rights law.
A federal appeals court has revived a lawsuit against Mesa Air Group (MESA.O) in which two Muslim men from Texas, Issam Abdallah and Abderraouf Alkhawaldeh, alleged racial profiling. The court ruled that Mesa could potentially be in violation of federal civil rights law for subjecting the men to disparate treatment.
Abdallah and Alkhawaldeh, both U.S. citizens, recounted an incident on September 14, 2019, when their flight from Birmingham, Alabama, to Dallas was canceled by the pilot, an East African Eritrean, due to what she described as their “Arabic, Mediterranean” ethnicity. She explicitly stated that she refused to fly the plane “with a brother named Issam on it.” Mesa rebooked them on a later flight.
In a unanimous 3-0 decision, the New Orleans-based appeals court found no apparent basis to consider the plaintiffs as “obviously suspicious.” This ruling upheld the possibility that Mesa might have treated them differently based on their race. The court rejected an earlier conclusion by a trial judge that claimed all passengers had their flights canceled, thus eliminating the notion of disparate treatment.
Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, writing for the court, emphasized that allowing such a perspective would lead to unacceptable consequences. He raised questions like whether an employer could escape liability by imposing a hiring freeze whenever a black applicant joined the pool or whether a school could terminate only female employees as long as it also dismissed male employees. Citing Supreme Court precedents, Smith asserted that the answer to such queries is negative.
The court pointed out that Mesa, headquartered in Phoenix, could not rely on its ticket rules that granted wide discretion to cancel flights, as an excuse for its actions. The case was remanded to U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth, Texas, for further proceedings.
As of Thursday, Mesa and its legal representatives had not responded to requests for comment. The plaintiffs had initially purchased their tickets from American Airlines (AAL.O), with whom they held frequent flier status. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a nonprofit organization, represented Abdallah and Alkhawaldeh in the case.
Hannah Mullen, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, stated, “Issam and Abderraouf were profiled, surveilled, and deemed to be a threat simply because of their race.” She expressed the team’s eagerness to bring the case before a jury.
The case in question is Abdallah et al v Mesa Air Group Inc, 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 22-10686.
