A Donald Trump-appointed judge in Texas ordered lawyers for Southwest Airlines to get “religious freedom” training from a Christian legal group that litigates against abortion and anti-discrimination laws.
Yes, really.
In an order published Monday, U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr said that’s the “least restrictive means of achieving compliance” with his civil contempt and sanctions order. Starr issued the order after the airline lost a trial against a flight attendant who alleged religious discrimination against her anti-abortion views. The judge said the airline had to inform flight attendants it “may not discriminate against Southwest flight attendants for their religious practices and beliefs.”
But Starr got mad that the airline’s notice said it “does not” discriminate rather than “may not.” Doing so, the judge wrote in his opinion, “radically shifted the meaning of the notice.”
He said the airline’s “speech and actions toward employees demonstrate a chronic failure to understand the role of federal protections for religious freedom,” and ordered the airline lawyers to undergo a minimum of eight hours of “religious liberty” training.
But who, pray tell, might conduct such training?
“Fortunately,” Starr observed, “there are esteemed nonprofit organizations that are dedicated to preserving free speech and religious freedom.”
He pointed to the right-wing Alliance Defending Freedom and cited the group’s successful representation of the Christian baker who didn’t want to make a same-sex wedding cake in the Masterpiece Cakeshop Supreme Court case. More recently at the high court, in 303 Creative v. Elenis, ADF successfully represented the Christian graphic designer who didn’t want to work on same-sex wedding websites.
At the 303 Creative arguments in December, ADF’s lawyer complained her client was faced with, among other things, “re-education” if she violated anti-discrimination law. Justice Neil Gorsuch likewise jumped on the “re-education” framing during the argument.
Now it seems Starr wants such programming (albeit, on the opposite end of the spectrum) conducted by a group that takes a leading adversarial role in court on discrimination and abortion issues. Indeed, among other things, ADF is behind the ongoing litigation challenging the abortion pill mifepristone. The airline is reportedly appealing the order. Meanwhile, ADF isn’t taking well the anti-abortion side’s failure on Tuesday to win a ballot measure in Ohio that would have thwarted abortion rights. The next day, the group complained on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, of a “misinformation campaign” and said, “Abortion activists will stop at nothing.” “Education,” ADF wrote, “starts now.” If the airline does appeal, we’ll see if and when “education” starts for its lawyers.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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