Southwest Airlines after facing legal complaints has agreed to cut its DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) agenda, and agreed the woke hiring practices were “unlawful” and “discriminatory.” The airline giant has scooped up more than $330 million in federal government contracts since 2007, while “explicitly promoting illegal ‘diversity, equity and inclusion.’” This was in violation of the airline’s equal opportunity agreements, said America First Legal (AFL), the firm that filed a federal complaint. Southwest isn’t the only airline targetted by AFL, which is a non-profit led by senior advisors of President-elect Donald Trump during his first term in office. American Airlines and United Airlines face legal complaints over unlawful, discriminatory hiring practices as well, said AFL in a November 1 press release. The America First law firm is also going after Starbucks, Major League Baseball and NASCAR for their DEI agendas. .AFL has now received confirmation on the illegality of the agenda from the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). AFL on January 17, 2024, filed the complaint against Southwest with the OFCCP. The office confirmed on Tuesday Southwest “acknowledged and agreed to abandon its unlawful discriminatory employment practices outlined in AFL’s federal civil rights complaint,” said AFL in a statement. In the January complaint, AFL requested an immediate investigation into the airline “for allegedly breaching the company’s contractual obligations under federal contracting law.”OFCCP, having undergone an investigation this year, on Monday held a compliance conference with Southwest. The investigation findings cite “a violation of the equal opportunity clause.”After the meeting, Southwest “acknowledged and agreed to end its illegal race and sex-based discrimination in all hiring and promotional processes, including all unlawful DEI quotas, benchmarks, or preferences,” said AFL. AFL legal counsel Will Scolinos in a separate statement said Americans “have had enough of corporations’ overt discrimination under the guise of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.”“On your next flight, would you rather be told that your pilot checks the right DEI boxes or that he was hired because he was the best of all competing candidates?”“It is unacceptable that corporations are so openly using everyday Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars to meet their unlawful race and sex quotas to achieve some ‘correct’ amount of diversity and representation. Discrimination on the basis of immutable characteristics is always wrong.”
