Fired flight attendant blasts airline's 'DEI push,' alleges religious discrimination in lawsuit
After Alaska Airlines flight attendants Marli Brown and Lacey Smith say they evoked their Christian faith during their company's push for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), the two called for religious liberty in the workplace.
Smith spoke with Fox News Digital about why she believes her termination by Alaska Airlines was motivated by religious discrimination. During the interview, she was accompanied by Stephanie Taub, Senior Counsel for First Liberty Institute (FLI), who is representing her in a lawsuit against Alaska Airlines that they filed in May 2022.
"I went to access my schedule in the morning … I saw that Alaska had posted an article that just said Alaska supports the Equality Act," Smith told Fox News Digital on Friday.
"There are a lot of different religious people who had issues with the Equality Act. And I guess I just had some questions with Alaska in terms of what that meant when they said things like, ‘Alaska supports the Equality Act’ … What does that mean for me?"
The Equality Act, which was introduced by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., sought to add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes in employment, housing, and other capacities under federal civil rights law. The measure passed the House in February 2021.
Her comments to Fox News Digital came after FLI and the Ard Law Group on Wednesday filed a motion for summary judgment on behalf of Smith and Brown after they sued Alaska Airlines and the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), a union for flight attendants, in May 2022.
FLI and Ard Law Group alleged that the airline terminated them because they "asked questions in a company forum about the company’s support for the Equality Act" and that the AFA "failed to adequately defend them."
"At the time, it's important to look at the context that this is taking place when Alaska Airlines had a major DEI push where they were encouraging their employees to have courageous conversations with each other about and ask difficult questions and share their diverse perspectives," Taub told Fox News Digital.
She went on to say, "And so that's why it's pretty shocking when we have a couple of Christian flight attendants that were sharing their perspectives and were fired."
The flight attendants’ skepticism of the Equality Act came at the time the bill was being discussed in Congress in 2021. During that period, Alaska Airlines voiced support for the bill, but the two flight attendants were concerned that their employer’s stance on the measure was premature because how the bill would impact employees who could hold conflicting beliefs was unclear.
"I think that was the issue is that they didn't know how it would affect me in the workplace," Smith told Fox News Digital.
"For me personally, I have traditional Christian views on sexual morality: male and female, all of that."
She explained further that there was a lot of confusion around the details of the bill.
"I wanted to know what that meant for me as an employee with Alaska Airlines supporting the Equality Act," she explained.
They say the airline announced support for the bill on an internal employee message board. Brown and Smith challenged the threat to religious liberty and parental rights that the bill poses on a messaging platform.
Brown asked if Alaska supported "endangering the Church, encouraging suppression of religious freedom, obliterating women's rights and parental rights."
She warned that the act would force "every American to agree with controversial government-imposed ideology or be treated as an outlaw," thus, "demolishing existing civil rights and Constitutional freedoms," which are protected under the Civil Rights Act.
Brown claimed that the Equality Act would endanger the safety and privacy of girls and women, including shower and locker room facilities, female-only shelters, and prisons.
Smith told Fox News Digital that she questioned the airline, "As a company, do you think it’s possible to regulate morality?"
Alaska Airlines Senior VP of People, Andy Schneider, responded to Smith’s comment, according to court documents reported by Fox13 Seattle.
"Supporting the Equality Act is not about regulating morality. It’s about supporting laws that allow our LGBTQ+ employees and guests, no matter what state they live in or fly to, to be protected against discrimination," Schneider said.
"That's the question that got me terminated," Smith told Fox News Digital.
"That was the first conversation that I had with Alaska that they posted back. And then shortly after they took that down, deleted the comment, and then they told me that they were calling me in for something that I had posted online."
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Eventually, Smith noticed that all of her trips were canceled.
"And, so you're just like… it's starting to seem more and more serious," Smith said.
FLI claimed they had their comments removed for being "discriminatory," "hateful" and "offensive," and were suspended from flight shifts pending an investigation.
Other comments criticizing the airlines’ support for the Equality Act were not removed because they did not address religious liberty concerns, the court document noted.
When the flight attendants sought "religious accommodation" during the termination process from the AFA, they claimed they did not get any help.
She added that they did not agree with her criticism of the bill.
An AFA spokesperson told Fox News Digital that "conversations are taken out of context by First Liberty."
"Union leaders did not report or turn the Flight Attendants into Alaska management. The conversations were private — not in a ‘company chat,’" the spokesperson said.
The statement explained further, "AFA represented the plaintiffs vigorously and decided not to advance the plaintiffs' cases to arbitration because their claims lacked sufficient merit. We stand against discrimination in all its forms."
After their comments were removed, Smith and Brown were subject to an investigation and probed by airline officials. Eventually, they were terminated.
Furthermore, FLI alleged that the other participants were treated better than Brown and Lacey and that the airline violated their own "Three Strikes Policy" after what appeared to have been one offense from both of the plaintiffs.
According to court documents, it explained that Smith received a "Notice of Discharge," explaining that she was fired "because it perceived her moral beliefs about gender identity or sexual orientation to be discriminatory."
"If Lacey held different religious beliefs about sexual morality, then the Company would not have fired her," the court brief states.
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"Alaska Airlines VP of Inflight testified that an employee’s use of the term ‘opposite sex’ violates the Airlines’ discrimination policy because that implies that there are only two sexes," FLI reported.
"Since this is pending litigation, we can't comment," a spokesperson for Alaska Airlines told Fox News Digital.
"Benjamin Franklin equates ignorance with tyranny. And I think unfortunately, currently in 2024 and obviously 2021, etc., there's a lot of people who are ignorant to their freedom and protection from religious discrimination in the workplace," Smith told Fox News Digital.
"I don't know how we got here as a nation to where somebody can't bring up their own questions about morality without losing their job. But that's where we're at."
Smith now works as a front desk receptionist at a hotel.