A mother who was suspected of trafficking her daughter in October 2021 by employees of Southwest Airlines has filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the company.
Mary MacCarthy was traveling to Denver from Los Angeles with her 10-year-old daughter to attend her brother’s funeral, she told NBC News nearly two years ago. Upon landing in Denver, MacCarthy and her daughter were confronted by police officers because a flight attendant suspected her of possible human smuggling.
A federal lawsuit filed Thursday in Colorado District Court accused Southwest Airlines of racial discrimination. MacCarthy accused airline staff of targeting her as a suspect “based on a racist assumption about a mixed-race family.”
“The officers began questioning Ms. MacCarthy and made it clear that they had been given the racially tinged information that Ms. MacCarthy’s daughter was possibly being trafficked by her simply because Ms. MacCarthy is white and her daughter is black,” the lawsuit said.
David Lane, the attorney representing MacCarthy, said the lawsuit is designed to hold the airline accountable and to reexamine its own training. He said the use of racial profiling in this case has attempted to approach a serious crime with a “easy, stereotypical formula.”
“Just as police are not constitutionally allowed to stop and search youth of color based on their race, corporate America is also not allowed to use such profiling when using law enforcement to stop and question individuals. families of various races simply based on their divergent races, which is what Southwest did,” Lane said.
MacCarthy said her daughter broke down in tears during the interrogation and remains traumatized by the incident nearly two years later. During an interview with NBC News in 2021, MacCarthy said that her daughter was “sobbing” throughout the entire encounter.
“Unfortunately, she has already had charged encounters with the police. Any child is going to be scared in a situation like this,” MacCarthy said.
According to a police report, the flight attendant said she singled out the family as suspects because they were the last to board the plane and asked other passengers to change seats so they could sit together. The flight attendant did not see the mother and her daughter speak on the plane and she claimed that MacCarthy told her daughter not to speak to the crew, according to the report.
MacCarthy denied claims that she and her daughter did not speak on the flight or that she prohibited her daughter from speaking to the crew. She also said that 10 days after the incident she was called by an investigator from the Denver Police Department’s human trafficking unit.
According to the police report, the incident was closed as “unfounded” and no further action was necessary.
Southwest Airlines declined to comment on the litigation to NBC News on Sunday. The company said in 2021 that it was conducting a review of the incident, but the airline did not respond to questions on Sunday about the results of its review.
The lawsuit calls for a jury trial, costs and attorneys’ fees, as well as damages to be established at trial.
This article It was originally published in English by Doha Madani for our sister network NBCNews.com. For more from NBC News go here.
