A US District Judge has ruled that 
Southwest Airlines must face a discrimination lawsuit regarding its program to provide free flights to Hispanic students. The lawsuit was filed back in May by the American Alliance for Equal Rights, which claims the ¡Lánzate! Travel Award Program unfairly discriminated based on race and violated federal civil rights laws.
Southwest Hispanic student flights lawsuit to go ahead
In the wake of May’s lawsuit, Southwest opened the program to all races and offered the American Alliance for Equal Rights a nominal damage payment of $0.01, also asking the organization to drop its suit. However, American Alliance declined the request, and Judge Sidney Fitzwater of US District Court for the Northern District of Texas has ruled that Southwest’s “unsuccessful tender of one cent to Alliance was plainly an unaccepted offer that could not moot Alliance’s nominal damages claims,” adding that an “unaccepted settlement offer is insufficient to render a case moot.”
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American Alliance for Equal Rights President Edward Blum hailed the decision as “a powerful tool to prevent case-mooting tactics from discriminators nationwide.” The alliance’s lawsuit claims the program unfairly excluded students of other races who would equally benefit from the policy, in violation of the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1964.
Its lawsuit states that the airline’s “rank discrimination was never lawful, even before Harvard held that colleges cannot use race in admissions,” citing the 2023 landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States (Harvard, 600 U.S. 181) that “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”
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Related
Southwest Airlines Is Being Sued For Discrimination Over Its Free Flights Program For Hispanic Students
The carrier could face legal scrutiny.
The carrier’s ¡Lánzate! Travel Award Program was established in 2004 as part of a partnership with the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), a non-profit involved with over 600 leading educational institutions. Eligibility for this program was available only to Hispanic students attending an academic institution more than 200 miles away from their home, awarding them four free roundtrip tickets each year.
End of the line for DEI?
Southwest recently revealed it would be ending all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) hiring practices, such as quotas, benchmarks, and hiring preferences, following a suit brought by America First Legal asserting that “discrimination on the basis of immutable characteristics is always wrong.”
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Apparently, 63% of the carrier’s roughly 18,000 new hires in 2022 were from racially diverse backgrounds and 51% were women. This prompted America First Legal to look into Southwest’s hiring practices before requesting an official investigation by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP).
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Why & How Are Airlines Looking To Foster A More Diverse Piloting Workforce?
Tying with historically Black universities, and a staunch dedication to increasing diversity has been at the forefront of various airlines’ plans.
DEI programs have been accused of planting their own racial or ideological biases into institutions, and it seems major US companies are starting to catch on. For example, Boeing recently announced it would be merging its DEI department with another human resources division following significant criticism over its hiring policies. Other high-profile companies to reverse their DEI policies include Walmart and Ford Motor.
