A judge has ordered Southwest Airlines to reinstate a flight attendant who was fired because she’s pro-life.
Flight attendant Charlene Carter, 56, of Aurora, Colorado, worked as a flight attendant at Southwest for nearly 21 years. In 2017, she was fired after sharing her pro-life beliefs on Facebook and speaking out against the Transportation Workers Union of America (TWU) Local 556 spending members’ dues on pro-abortion activities.
In July, a federal district court in Dallas, Texas awarded her $5.1 million, but she pressed on with her legal battle because of her love for her job and the customers she serves and Carter hoped to get her job back. A judge has ruled that will now happen….
Southwest was initially ordered to pay Carter $4.15 million in back pay and compensation for pain and suffering, while the Transport Workers Union was landed with a $1.15 million bill in compensation for Carter.
But on Tuesday, a federal judge limited the total payout to $810,180, which includes $300,000 each from Southwest and the union in compensation, $150,000 in back pay, and $60,180 in prejudgment interest.
Southwest has also been ordered to rehire Carter with full seniority and benefits. Lawyers acting for Southwest unsuccessfully argued that Carter shouldn’t be reinstated because she had been volunteering at non-profit entities after her dismissal.
In addition, Southwest must send a copy of the jury’s verdict and judgement to all its flight attendants and post the documents on internal bulletin boards for at least 60 days.
The airline will also inform flight attendants that it is not allowed to discriminate against them for expressing their opinion about abortion on social media.
“Bags fly free with Southwest. But free speech didn’t fly at all with Southwest in this case,” district judge Brantley Starr ruled on Tuesday.
“The jury found the Defendants (Southwest Airlines) were grossly intolerant of their flight attendants’ speech in violation of federal law. And, even now, their lawyers continue to hunt for ‘controversial’ social-media posts from Carter instead of pondering their own mistakes and planning a future life free of them,” the judgment continued….
Years ago, Carter said she promised God that she would speak out for life after finding forgiveness and healing from her own abortion.
She told the Epoch Times that she experienced an unplanned pregnancy when she was a 19-year-old college student. Carter said her boyfriend wanted the abortion, and she was worried about how she would pay to raise a child.
Still, Carter did not know if she really wanted to go through with it. At the Planned Parenthood, she asked about her unborn baby’s development, and they lied to her, according to the report.
“At this point in your pregnancy (about 10 to 12 weeks), it’s just a clump of cells … you have nothing to worry about … it’s just basically this round blob of stuff,” she remembered the abortion worker saying.
Horrifically, Carter said she realized she had been lied to when, in the middle of the abortion, she turned and saw parts of her aborted baby that had just been suctioned out of her. The sight made her sick.
“I was sick from the anesthesia, and sick from what I just did,” she remembered. Later, she said she learned: “Its heart was already beating … its fingerprints were already developed, specific to that child; eye color had already been decided. It’s an amazing creation that God has made…each one is so different, so intricately made.”
For many years, Carter struggled with depression and believed God was punishing her for what she had done to her baby, she said. Then, at a church event in 2007, she said she found forgiveness and healing in Christ, and promised God that she would speak out against abortion.
So, in 2017, she criticized her employer labor union for supporting pro-abortion politics.
Here’s more from the report:
On Feb. 7, 2017, in response to union activities that she viewed as pro-abortion, Carter posted a video of an aborted fetus on her Facebook page, along with these words: “WARNING, this is VERY GRAPHIC!! I want my tax dollars to STOP funding this….PERIOD!!!! This is MURDER.”
… Officials said this constituted a violation of the company’s social media policy; that was one reason they cited for firing Carter.
In contrast, the company took no action when its name appeared on a banner that Local 556 members carried during the Women’s March; pictures of that banner and the marchers from Local 556 showed up on social media, too, according to court records….
The above comes from a Dec. 7 story on LifeNews.
I am glad that she repented of her abortion.
I’m sorry Southwest does not repent of its anti-life bigotry.
God bless brave Charlene Carter. She repented of her abortion, made a promise to God– and was very faithful to her promise. That required lots of faith and courage.
It’s interesting how many pro-lifers have had abortions. It seems a bit hypocritical to me to tell other people not to do what they did. It completely depends on the person whether they will be relieved or depressed after an abortion. People should know themselves better. Don’t be intimate with someone else before you know your own mind, body and spirit. Contraception can fail so if you’re going to risk pregnancy at all you should think about how you’ll handle an unwanted pregnancy and talk about it with the other person too. It blows my mind how many couples disagree on what to do. These are the kind of things that should be talked about long before taking such risks.