Court of Appeals rejects religious discrimination case

In this case, the plaintiff alleges that his employer, Delta Air Lines, Inc, terminated his employment because of his religion and national origin. His evidence for this is that the airline's policy allegedly targeted people who fly to Tel Aviv, Israel. The Court of Appeals rejects the case under Rule 12.

The case is Abada v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., a summary order issued on March 28. The employer says plaintiff was fired because he violated its travel companion policy. In discrimination cases, plaintiffs can win through circumstantial evidence, as it's the rare employer that tells an employee he is fired for the reasons prohibited under Title VII, such as religion, race, or sex. Plaintiff's theory is that he was really fired because of his Israel heritage. As the Court of Appeals (Raggi, Carney and Cabranes) puts it:

His amended complaint alleges that Delta distributed a “Talking Points” memorandum from which he quotes three descriptions of individuals Delta was allegedly targeting or investigating for violations of the Policy: individuals with “interest in frequent travel to Tel Aviv”; “certain individuals who live in the New York and Atlanta area who appear to be connected in one or more ways”; and employees “having possible ties to this group of people.”

Plaintiff's theory is that "the individuals described in these excerpts are, in fact, 'Jews and Israelis,' and that the ways these individuals are 'connected' includes, 'of course, connection by ethnicity race, language and religion.'” His association with customers like this, plaintiff says, motivated his termination, as the company was monitoring Tel Aviv-related passengers for the travel companion policy. The Court of Appeals rejects this argument, finding it conclusory even under Rule 12, a pre-discovery mechanism for dismissing cases that do not plead a cause of action.