FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 01/16/2024 - Late Friday, Schaerr-Jaffe LLP & SL Law PLLC, representing thousands of United Airlines employees who sought Reasonable Accommodations to protect their religious liberty and health against their CEO’s Covid Vaccine Mandate, filed a motion for class certification in the Northern District of Texas in Sambrano v. United Airlines. This motion confirms the disdain Kirby holds for his religious employees. Kirby and his “e team” led a coercive, discriminatory, and retaliatory pressure-cooker campaign to force employees to violate their faith, merely to improve his bottom line. Kirby threatened employees to “be very careful” about requesting such accommodations because “few people” would “get through the medical and religious exemption process. ” Citing unfounded statics to justify his safety claim, the motion reveals something much more sinister. This “Scott-level initiative” purposefully targeted and abused employees. For example, employees were forced to wear easily identifiable respirators as punishment which emboldened coworkers’ bullying and shaming. “Kirby even proposed ‘requiring accommodated employees to walk around with special stickers on their badges broadcasting vaccination status, causing one HR Representative to question, ‘like the scarlet letter...Oh my goodness. Who are we???’” In another instance, a supervisor documented the “Serious Situation Regarding Covid-19 Vaccine and Discrimination thereof, ” reporting that an employee said he had to acquiesce “to feed [his] kids but it sucks to be treated badly for my beliefs;” another, upon entering a breakroom stated that “everyone in this room that’s not vaccinated should get sick and die. ” Ultimately, the record is clear that United’s employees were emboldened to harass unvaccinated employees because they saw the CEO doing the same. Alarmingly, United’s Corporate Medical director, Pat Baylis, was cut out of medical decisions and to her disbelief was replaced by attorneys: “[i]ncredible that they want the lawyers to weigh in on this!” At the same time, HR employees openly mocked the faithful, criticizing an employee seeking a religious accommodation for probably “purchas[ing] a statue of Buddha from Amazon, ” [stating] “I want to know where ppl are getting these sham Drs to write them off for these alleged illness[es]. ” Ultimately, those who survived Kirby’s manufactured “crisis of conscience” suffered tortuous corporate policies, retired, were terminated, or were put on indefinite unpaid leave--effectively terminated! Through the efforts of Airline Employees 4 Health Freedom, nearly 2000 employees banded together to fight back. You can learn more about the case and our efforts to hold CEO Kirby accountable at: ae4hf.org