Hicks v. Southwest Airlines

In November 2024, Dr. Briana Hicks, a Black woman, was removed from a Southwest Airlines flight after she reported that one of the flight attendants aboard the flight racially discriminated against her. Dr. Hicks had been seated in the exit row of the airplane. During the exit-row briefing, as she was putting her phone into “airplane mode,” a white flight attendant singled out Dr. Hicks for having a phone in her hand while he was talking. He demeaned, belittled, and berated Dr. Hicks in front of her fellow passengers. All of the other passengers in the exit rows were white, and many had their phones in their hands or were typing on laptop computers during the exit-row briefing. The only explanation for Dr. Hicks’s differential treatment was that she is Black. A white exit-row passenger even asked the flight attendant why he was singling out Dr. Hicks when white exit-row passengers were also holding their phones during the briefing. When Dr. Hicks reported her differential treatment to other flight attendants, the flight attendant who have given the exit-row briefing kicked Dr. Hicks off the flight. She therefore endured the humiliation and indignity of race discrimination, and experienced further discrimination when she reported the incident to other Southwest Airlines employees.

In July 2025, co-counseling with the firm Miner, Barnhill & Galland in Illinois, we filed suit against Southwest Airlines on behalf of Dr. Hicks. Southwest has moved to dismiss our complaint, and we have filed a response in opposition.