Judge Scolds Southwest Airlines “You Guys Should Not Have Done That” As It Tries To Kill Lawsuit

Southwest Airlines asked a federal judge for permission to file one narrow, late motion. It got permission then used the filing to try to knock out the whole case. The judge was not amused. The airline is defending a class action over how its attendance system treated flight attendants who took intermittent leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. Southwest did not assess points for the protected leave itself. But taking the leave could disqualify an employee from earning reductions in existing attendance points, potentially moving the employee closer to termination. Southwest says these reductions are conditional rewards for completing a full month or quarter with good attendance, not benefits that employees earn day by day. Federal rules specifically allow employers to deny perfect attendance bonuses when an employee misses the target because of protected leave, as long as comparable non-protected leave is treated the same way. Employees say this wasn’t merely a bonus. Pre-existing points determined whether they kept their jobs, and one protected absence could wipe out as much as a quarter’s progress toward having those points reduced. A flight attendant could wind up closer to termination specifically because she took federally protected leave. The lawsuit, Refuerzo v. Southwest Airlines, has been pending in federal court in California since 2022. Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley certified a nationwide class in 2024. The group seeking changes to Southwest’s policy included more than 9,000 flight attendants, while the damages claims involve a much smaller group who were actually terminated. Southwest missed a February motion deadline. It later asked to challenge whether specific terminated employees could prove that the disputed policy actually caused their terminations. The judge allowed that limited filing. But Southwest’s July filing opened with a broader argument to dispose of the entire class action, saying no employee had lost an accrued benefit, so there was no violation of federal leave law at all. Law360 reports that Judge Corley began Wednesday’s hearing by confronting Southwest’s lawyers about what they had done. When counsel tried to defend the filing, she called it “a bad argument.” “You guys should not have done that.” Her written order refused to consider Southwest’s broad argument because it was both late and outside the permission she had granted. She also denied the airline’s narrower request to remove 11 employees from the case, finding factual disputes over their attendance records. Despite the courtroom scolding, the judge agreed that determining whether the policy caused each termination requires looking at each flight attendant’s individual attendance history. She partially decertified the damages class, leaving a common trial over whether Southwest’s policy violated federal law but requiring more individualized treatment of causation and damages. Topics on this page