Black Female flight Attendant Sues Spirit Airlines Claiming They Fired Her Because of Her Weight

A former Spirit Airlines flight attendant is suing the budget airline in federal court, claiming she was fired for being overweight and wasn’t given the same opportunity to lose weight as a white co-worker.

The Miami Herald reported that Chelsia Blackmon, a Black woman, filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. The suit states Blackmon was unable to fasten the seat belt for the jump seat on one of Spirit’s planes in September 2021, forcing her to exit the plane. Spirit then gave Blackmon between September 3 to October 12 to lose weight so she could fit in the jump seat.

Blackmon was fired on November 3, 2021, and now the former flight attendant and her lawyers are claiming she was the victim of racial discrimination. In her suit, Blackmon cited a white colleague at Spirit who she says also couldn’t fit into the jump seat due to her size and weight, but was given “several months” to lose weight to fit. Blackmon was given a little more than a month.

“As a result of the discriminatory and illegal differential treatment based upon her race, [Blackmon] has suffered lost wages, compensatory damages, mental anguish, and suffering as a result of the discriminatory treatment that Spirit Air subjected her to,” the suit alleges, according to the Herald.

Blackmon is seeking back pay, damages, and legal costs in a jury trial, according to Business Insider.

Spirit is currently dealing with another employee lawsuit. Paddle Your Own Kanoo reported that the airline is currently a class-action suit for its flight attendants for not counting passenger boarding and deplaning as work hours.

The legal issues come at an inconvenient time for Spirit. The airline is in the middle of a $3.8 billion sale to JetBlue Airways. The Department of Justice still has to approve the potential merger that would make JetBlue the fifth-largest U.S. airline, but, according to the Herald.