Trump judge orders lawyers to attend training run by an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group

U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr – who was appointed by Donald Trump – has ordered three lawyers representing Southwest Airlines to attend a “religious liberty training” run by the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). The airline has already said that it’s appealing the ruling.

The case involves flight attendant Charlene Carter, who said she was fired after she sent repeated messages to her union’s president opposing abortion. She said that her messages came from her deeply held Christian beliefs, so she was fired for her religion. Judge Starr ruled for her last year and ordered Southwest to give her her job back.

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She said she found one full of “Pride stuff” and that she’s replacing the “terrible” books with Bibles and “devotion books.”

Starr also told Southwest to tell its employees that it “may not” discriminate against them on the basis of religion, and its lawyers wrote and released a statement saying that it “does not” discriminate on the basis of religion. This did not please Carter – whose lawyers called it “Southwest Airlines’ bald-faced attempt to dodge its responsibility to inform flight attendants of its wrongdoing” – and she asked the court for further sanctions against the airline. This past Monday, Starr ordered the lawyers to attend the hate group’s training sessions.

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David Lopez, former general counsel for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), said that the order to attend a hate group’s training sessions could violate the lawyers’ rights.

“The court is moving into some really dangerous territory here,” he told Reuters.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which follows extremism in the U.S., has designated ADF as a hate group for years, citing statements from its leadership attacking the humanity of LGBTQ+ people. For example, one senior legal counsel at ADF said that the “homosexual agenda” requires “recruitment among those that are at an emotionally vulnerable stage of development,” implying that gay people molest children in order to turn them gay.

“We mention the new promotion of pedophilia in the context of talking about the influence of homosexual behavior on college campuses, because, despite all objections to the contrary, the two are often intrinsically linked,” ADF founder Alan Sears and former ADF Vice President Craig Osten wrote in their book.

The organization represented a Christian web designer in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, the Supreme Court decision last month that said that some creative professionals have a constitutional right not to serve LGBTQ+ people if they feel that doing so would violate their religious beliefs. The group has filed numerous lawsuits trying to turn back LGBTQ+ protections.

ADF also opposes reproductive freedom and helped the state of Mississippi win in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.

The New Republic notes that it’s not clear why Starr ordered the lawyers to attend the hate group’s training sessions since Carter didn’t mention them in her court filings and they are not involved in her case.

Starr gave the lawyers until August 28 to attend the eight-hour training session.

Southwest has already said that it’s appealing the order.