PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release:
May 20, 2024
Contact:
Edward Blum
703-505-1922
edwardjayblum@gmail.com
American Alliance for Equal Rights Files Lawsuit Challenging Southwest Airlines ¡Lánzate! Travel Award Program
Free Flight Program Available Only to Hispanic Students
(Austin, TX) Today, the American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER) filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division, alleging that Southwest Airlines ¡Lánzate! Travel Award Program is illegal under the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and 1964.
The Alliance seeks declaratory relief, injunctive relief, and nominal damages.
The complaint is attached.
As highlighted in the complaint, under its ¡Lánzate! Travel Award Program, Southwest awards free flights to students every year. In exchange for a shot at the prize, applicants must agree to the airline’s Contract of Carriage; license away their name, image, and likeness; hand over their personal data; and more.
Eligibility for the program depends on ethnicity. Southwest admits that “this program [is] ONLY for Hispanic students.” And the airline makes applicants “identify [their] Hispanic origin” when they apply.
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 prohibits any racial discrimination in the making and enforcement of contracts. Better known as §1981(42 U.S.C. §1981(a)), this statute guarantees all Americans the “same right” to contract, thus protecting the “equal right of all persons” to “make and enforce contracts without respect to race.”
Moreover, because the airline takes federal funds, AAER asserts it is violating Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights act as well.
Southwest Airlines ¡Lánzate! Travel Award Program excludes African Americans, whites, Native Americans, and Asians. AAER has members who were excluded from the program this year because they are the wrong ethnicity. These students will be excluded again next year if Southwest is not enjoined by the courts.
This kind of purposeful discrimination was never lawful, even before Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard held that colleges cannot use race in admissions.
Edward Blum, president of AAER said, “Programs like this one that exclude participants because of their race or ethnicity are unfair, unpopular, and illegal. Southwest Airlines should immediately open this program to all students, regardless of their skin color or ethnic heritage.”
The American Alliance for Equal Rights is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit membership organization with over 200 members. AAER’s mission is to challenge in the courts the use of race and ethnicity as factors in employment, contracting, elections, and other areas of our nation’s public policies.