Southwest accused white mom of trafficking Black daughter—lawsuit

A lawsuit against Southwest Airlines alleges that a white woman and her 10-year-old daughter, whom she said is mixed-race Black, were victims of racial profiling during a flight after an airline employee, suspecting that the child was being trafficked, called police.

Mary MacCarthy, who filed the suit Thursday in Colorado, said the Denver Police Department was called after they arrived at Denver International Airport from California on October 22, 2021.

Police eventually let the pair go, but not before causing “extreme emotional distress,” according to the lawsuit, which requests economic damages, compensatory damages, as well as punitive and exemplary damages.

“To this day, when Moira and I are out in public—and especially at airports or on planes—I’m hyperaware that we might be judged and reported for any interaction we have with each other,” McCarthy, who lives in Los Angeles, told Newsweek on Friday.

“It’s a strange feeling to be on alert about your most basic behaviors with your child, and it’s exhausting. As for Moira [who is now 12], she still clams up and doesn’t want to talk about what happened.”

David Lane, MacCarthy’s attorney, said the intention of the lawsuit was to bring accountability to the company and cause it to re-examine training and policies.

“In using racial profiling to cause the Denver police to stop innocent travelers, Southwest Airlines has attempted to address serious the criminal activity of sex-trafficking through use of a stereotypical, easy formula,” Lane told Newsweek.

“Just as the police are constitutionally not permitted to stop-and-frisk young men of color based upon their race, corporate America is similarly not permitted to resort to such profiling to use law enforcement to stop and question racially diverse families simply based upon their divergent races, which is what Southwest did.”

A Southwest Airlines spokesperson told Newsweek: “We don’t have anything to add right now on this pending litigation.”

The incident was particularly emotional for MacCarthy and her daughter as they were flying to Denver for a funeral after the sudden death of MacCarthy’s brother, according to the lawsuit. It also states that the daughter began to cry when approached by police.

In November 2021, Southwest said in a statement that it would conduct an internal review of the incident. At the time, MacCarthy asked for an apology from the airline but had not yet received one.

“We were disheartened to learn of this mother’s account when traveling with her daughter,” Southwest said. “We are conducting a review of the situation internally, and we will be reaching out to the customer to address her concerns and offer our apologies for her experience traveling with us.”

The airline also said that each employee receives “robust training” on human trafficking.

“In our interactions with Southwest Airlines since the incident, and with the information revealed in the bodycam footage, I’ve felt attacked as a mother and frankly as a human being,” MacCarthy said. “Customers should know the true nature of the company they’re doing business with.”