By Daniel Wiessner
(Reuters) – American Airlines has agreed to settle a race discrimination lawsuit by three Black men who were temporarily removed from a flight at the insistence of white flight attendants, according to a court filing on Thursday.
The terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but lawyers for the men said the settlement includes “a commitment by American to take action to prevent discrimination in the future.”
The plaintiffs had claimed that they and five other Black men were removed from a New York-bound flight out of Phoenix, Arizona, in January for about an hour after white flight attendants complained about a passenger with offensive body odor, in a lawsuit filed in Brooklyn federal court in May.
None of the men ordered off the plane had an odor, the plaintiffs said in the lawsuit. They called the incident “traumatic, upsetting, scary, humiliating, and degrading.”
The men accused the airline of violating a Civil War-era law banning race discrimination in contracts.
American Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comment. When the lawsuit was filed, the airline said it takes discrimination claims seriously and was investigating the matter.
Lawyers for the three men who sued said American had fired the flight attendants involved in the incident and expressed a commitment to “delivering a positive experience to customers who choose to fly with the company.”
In 2017, the NAACP urged Black travelers not to fly American, citing what it said were a series of racially-based incidents. The civil rights organization withdrew its advisory the following year after the airline agreed to update its policies and train employees on implicit bias.
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Aurora Ellis)
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