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.