An appeals court has rejected an attempt by United Airlines to dismiss a long-running class action lawsuit brought against the Chicago-based carrier by a group of its own employees over its far-reaching COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
In August 2021, United Airlines became the first U.S.-based carrier to issue its employees with a vaccine ultimatum: Get the COVID-19 shot within five weeks or face the threat of termination.
United did, however, allow employees to apply for an exemption on either religious or medical grounds. Nearly 6,000 employees applied for an exemption, but the airline only approved just over 4,000 requests.
Staffers who had their applications rejected were faced with the threat of being fired, while those who had their exemption request granted were initially told that they would all be placed on an indefinite period of unpaid leave until the pandemic had “meaningfully receded.”
In response to lawsuits brought by a slew of employees, United ultimately amended this requirement, allowing some back-of-house workers to continue working as long as they submitted themselves to regular testing and masked up at all times.
Frontline workers like pilots and flight attendants were, however, put on unpaid leave for around five months, until pandemic-era restrictions were widely lifted.
A group of employees attempted to sue United, accusing the airline of forcing them to choose between losing their livelihoods or getting a vaccine that they objected to on religious grounds.
Around 2,221 employees were eventually forced to take unpaid leave, and this became the basis of a class action lawsuit against the airline, with three distinct subclasses of plaintiffs.
The first group was everyone who had applied for a religious or medical exemption but then faced being fired, put on unpaid leave, or getting the vaccine. The second group was employees who would be accommodated with regular testing and masking.
And the third group were frontline employees who would only be accommodated with unpaid leave. The district court declined to certify the first two classes but did certify the third class.
Both sides then appealed the district court’s decision to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The employees were seeking to have the first two classes certified on appeal, while United wanted the third class decertified.
After years of legal wrangling, the appeals court finally returned its judgment on Monday, upholding the district court’s original ruling. As a result, the employees in the third class will be able to continue their class action lawsuit against United.
The decision comes just as United faces a backlash from grassroots MAGA supporters over chief executive Scott Kirby’s apparent political change of heart, with him now actively supporting President Trump and the current administration’s policies.
The backlash was prompted by an old video emerging of Kirby telling a reporter that 50% of pilot trainees in United’s Aviate flying academy would be represented by women and people of color.
The video surfaced after Kirby recently appeared on a podcast hosted by Katie Miller, the wife of senior Trump aide Stephen Miller, in which he insisted that United only hired ‘the best of the best.’
In response, conservative influencer Laura Loomer slammed Kirby as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing and just another Leftist executive who wants to rewrite history to infiltrate the MAGA movement.”
