OPINION:
Christopher Gates, an ex-pilot for United Airlines, is suing his former employer for failing to uphold his request for a religion exemption to the COVID shot that was imposed company-wide.
Sue, baby, sue.
United Airlines isn’t just facing a single suit from Gates. The company is facing a mass religious discrimination suit from scores of former employees who say the company similarly violated their rights by forcing them to choose: Inject or stay home without pay. But Gates is suing separately because his case, as religious liberty rights’ cases go, is even more egregious than the others.
In December of 2021, Gates, a practicing Catholic, was fired for his refusal to take the shot.
“[He] objected to receiving any of the COVID-19 shots associated with aborted fetal cell lines,” Liberty Counsel, the firm representing Gates, wrote. “In the lawsuit, [we] argue that United Airlines violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act by discriminating against him and firing him for not injecting himself with an experimental drug against his sincerely held religious beliefs.”
United, in its defense, said the denial of Gates’ exemption was not an attack on his religion or religious beliefs. But United CEO Scott Kirby’s own public statements about the need for employees to take the shot, religion or no religion, show a bit of hostility.
“[The] airline’s discriminatory actions stemmed from a ‘company-wide hostility to employees seeking religious accommodations,’ as revealed by statements from … Kirby,” Liberty wrote. “At a United ‘town hall meeting’ in 2021, Kirby stated that ‘very few’ religious exemptions would be granted and warned that ‘any employee’ who decided they are ‘really religious’ would be ‘putting their job on the line,’ the lawsuit reads.”
United, in firing Gates, said any accommodation of his exemption request would have unduly burdened the company’s safety standards.
But — and this is where Gates’ suit is different from other plaintiffs’ — United never engaged in the “interactive process that requires participation by both the employer and the employee” to determine a mutually agreeable accommodation, as required by Title VII.
According to Liberty: “United cannot contend that accommodating Gates would have caused an undue hardship because it never even engaged in the required interactive process to determine the feasibility of an accommodation.”
Hmm.
Good point.
So, too, that of the mass plaintiffs.
Human Resources Director magazine, in a March 10 piece titled, “United Airlines faces mass lawsuit over vaccine accommodation policy,” on how a federal court has just cleared the way for the suit to go forward, wrote: “The dispute started in August 2021, when United rolled out a companywide vaccine mandate covering all of its US employees. … United’s original plan was to place every exempted worker on unpaid leave — indefinitely — until the pandemic [ended]. For non-customer-facing employees, such as mechanics and ramp agents, the airline eventually changed course, allowing them to keep working under a masking and testing requirement. But for customer-facing employees — pilots, flight attendants and others in roles that brought them into regular contact with the public — the policy held firm.”
So mechanics kept their jobs, despite the face they refused the shot. More than 2,200 other United workers were placed on unpaid leave, however — and that is where their discrimination suit comes into the picture. Their argument is that it’s not only unfair, but also illegal to grant an accommodation to one segment of the workforce, but not another.
As HRD put it: “A company’s own accommodation decisions in one part of the business can be used against it in another. If a policy works for some employees, the bar for claiming it would have failed for others is high.”
United is hardly the only company that forced employees to give up their rights, or face firings, during the COVID years. Far too many Americans were put in the position of having to decide whether or not to take an experimental shot as a condition of continuing to put food on the table for their families. And they should all see the inside of a courtroom and they should all have to face the angry and righteous indignation of their employees and ex-employees, followed by fines and fees and punitive damages imposed by the judicial system.
But United in 2021 was particularly draconian in its approach to COVID mandates, and Kirby was particularly known for his intolerance for dissenters. He was dragged before Congress to justify his use of force, which at the time, was shocking.
“Republican Senator Ted Cruz criticized United’s vaccine mandate, calling it ‘disturbing’ and [said it] was ‘disregarding the rights of your employees,’” Yahoo!Finance wrote in December 2021, of the congressional hearing. “Cruz noted American Airlines and Southwest Airlines both have said they do not plan to fire any employee over the vaccine requirements.”
Kirby and his airline should pay, and pay big, for the blatant disregard of employees’ constitutional and God-given rights and liberties.
If another COVID were to come, private businesses need to understand a health fright does not justify a company seizure of individual liberties and rights.
During COVID, United was at the forefront of seizing rights and sending a chilling message across America that, a la communism, it’s company first — collective first — and individual second. It’s only fitting for United now to be the one that’s punished publicly for its anti-America, anti-freedom COVID-era crackdowns.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.
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