Dive Brief:
- A former flight attendant for Alaska Airlines sued the airline alleging race and sex discrimination as well as wrongful termination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 after she was fired for posting a dance video on TikTok in which she was wearing her uniform, per court documents filed Tuesday.
- The flight attendant, an Asian American and African American female, was fired days before her probationary period was set to end, despite allegedly completing her training “at the top of her class,” per the lawsuit (Diala v. Alaska Airlines, Inc. et al.).
- The lawsuit alleged that “the individuals responsible for investigating Plaintiff’s social media post and deciding whether to terminate her employment were aware of comparable social media content posted by male flight attendants but imposed substantially less severe discipline, if any, on those employees.”
Dive Insight:
The worker said the company’s “reliance upon her probationary status as justification for her termination was not the true reason for the adverse employment action.” Rather she alleged her “probationary status was a pretextual justification for a termination decision that had already been influenced by discriminatory considerations relating to [her] race and gender.”
The “subjective nature” of Alaska Airlines’ social media and personal conduct policies allowed the company “to apply those policies inconsistently and selectively based upon protected classes of employees such as gender and race,” per the lawsuit.
In the video, the worker recorded herself twerking to music “with some explicit lyrics” on a grounded plane at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport while waiting for pilots to arrive for a flight to Houston, per court documents. She allegedly did not use any hashtags to connect her video to the airline.
The plaintiff said she was “held to heightened standards for reputational behavior particularly in relation to her perceived sex and race” over her firing for the video, which was allegedly comparable to videos made by her colleagues.
The worker also named the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO, the union that represented her during her time with Alaska Airlines, in her lawsuit, alleging failure to fairly represent because the union said it would not help her appeal her termination.
Neither the airline nor the union responded to requests for comment before press time.
