A white mother has filed a lawsuit against Southwest Airlines, accusing them of “blatant racism” after she claimed she was questioned about human trafficking while traveling with her biracial daughter.
The lawsuit was filed by Mary MacCarthy, who was traveling with her then-10-year-old daughter on Oct. 22, 2021. The two were making their way from their home state of California to Denver for MacCarthy’s brother’s funeral, according to the complaint filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado.
After MacCarthy and her daughter’s flight landed, the lawsuit says they deboarded and were then met by two armed officers from the Denver Police Department.
“The officers informed them that they wanted to question Plaintiff MacCarthy and her daughter because a Southwest Airlines employee had reported them as suspicious and Plaintiff MacCarthy as a potential human trafficker,” the lawsuit states. “As the officers spoke with Plaintiff MacCarthy, Plaintiff M.M. began to sob, fearing that she and/or her mother were in legal trouble for some reason.”
The complaint alleges that while MacCarthy and her daughter were on the flight, a Southwest employee reported her to the police.
“This is the type of situation that mixed-race families and families of color face all the time while traveling,” MacCarthy told The Denver Post in 2021.
During her conversation with the police, MacCarthy showed the officers identification, explained why she had traveled to Denver, and then they let her and her daughter go.
However, as a result of the situation, MacCarthy said she and her daughter suffered “extreme emotional distress.” MacCarthy is now seeking economic damages, compensatory damages, and punitive and exemplary damages.
“The whole incident was based on a racist assumption about a mixed‐race family,” the lawsuit said.
David Lane, MacCarthy’s lawyer, spoke with CBS News about the lawsuit, saying it was intended to hold the airline accountable. He also said Southwest should re-examine its training and policies.
“In using racial profiling to cause the Denver police to stop innocent travelers, Southwest Airlines has attempted to address the serious crime of sex-trafficking through use of a stereotypical, easy formula,” Lane told CBS News. “Just as the police are constitutionally not permitted to stop-and-frisk young men of color based upon their race, corporate America is similarly not permitted to resort to such profiling in using law enforcement to stop and question racially diverse families simply based upon their divergent races, which is what Southwest did.”
Southwest has denied requests for comment on the situation to numerous media outlets, citing the “pending litigation.”
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