Judge Allows Fired Catholic Flight Attendant’s Lawsuit to Proceed

A federal judge has cleared the way for a lawsuit filed by a Catholic flight attendant who says he was fired after privately expressing his religious beliefs during a work conversation and then abandoned by the union that was supposed to defend him.

Ruben Sanchez, a longtime United Airlines employee from Anchorage, Alaska, claims he was targeted after a brief, late-night conversation with a fellow flight attendant on May 30, 2023.

The two discussed their shared Catholic beliefs, including Church teachings on marriage and gender identity, while working a red-eye flight from Los Angeles to Cleveland.

Sanchez says their quiet exchange, held in the galley and out of earshot of passengers, led to a social media-fueled investigation and ultimately, his dismissal.

The airline launched the inquiry only after receiving a complaint via social media, which Sanchez’s legal team says came from someone with a personal grudge who wasn’t even on the flight.

United reviewed a decade’s worth of his online activity and flagged 35 posts out of more than 140,000, accusing him of violating standards of professionalism, despite no prior complaints from the company about his posts.

At the time of the firing, Sanchez was 52 years old and had worked for United for nearly 28 years.

He filed suit in January 2025, naming both the airline and the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, alleging age and religious discrimination and a failure by the union to uphold its duty to represent him fairly.

The union declined to take his case to arbitration unless he paid its share of the costs and hired his own attorney.

According to Catholic News Agency, in March, the union attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed, arguing that Sanchez’s claims lacked the necessary detail to suggest discrimination and were blocked under federal labor law. They cited a history of similar cases involving social media activity where arbitration had not been successful. But US District Judge Christina Snyder rejected those arguments in a ruling issued June 30.

Judge Snyder determined that Sanchez had presented a credible legal claim. She found he had made a plausible case that the union acted with bias or arbitrariness by refusing to support him and that his allegations of discrimination on the basis of religion and age were supported by initial evidence. The case now heads toward a possible jury trial unless it is settled or appealed.

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