Airline Passenger Loses Suit Over Weight Discrimination

An overweight woman who was forced to buy a second plane ticket on a flight to Burbank lost her claim Wednesday that she was the victim of discrimination.

Cynthia Luther, who said she weighs “more than the average woman,” claimed in a lawsuit against Southwest Airlines that she had no problem flying from Burbank to Reno last December.

But she alleged that on a return flight the day after Christmas, an airline employee humiliated her by insisting that she was so fat she required two seats.

On Wednesday, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Marilyn Hoffman threw out the lawsuit.

“The decision came as no surprise,” said Ed Stewart, spokesman for the Dallas-based airline. “Definitely no discrimination was involved.

“She was on a plane where every seat was sold. We’d have to displace another person to accommodate her,” Stewart said.

Southwest policy is to accommodate a large person whenever there is extra space, Stewart said. But if the flight is full and another passenger must be kicked off to comfortably seat an overweight person, then the person requiring two seats must pay for the extra space.

Bettye Travis, president of National Organization to Advance Fat Acceptance, said Southwest may have won a legal victory but what it did was still “morally wrong.”

“Airlines need to make accommodations for large people,” Travis said. “I applaud [the plaintiff] for standing up . . . and saying no, this is not OK.”

Southwest has been sued only two or three times by overweight passengers in the last 10 years, and none of the lawsuits has succeeded, Stewart said.

Nationwide, lawsuits alleging such discrimination have had mixed results, Travis said.

Whether a lawsuit prevails “depends on the judge and the prejudices of the court. Weight is something people have a lot of misinformation and personal prejudice about,” Travis said.

Attorneys on the case could not be reached for comment.