In Carter v. Southwest Airlines Co. No. 23-10536 (5th Cir. May 8, 2025), while substantially affirming a contempt finding against Southwest for failing to carry out an order to notify the workplace – about the Title VII right to engage in religious-practices – holds that the district court went too far in ordering company lawyers to attend “religious-liberty training.”
Plaintiff Carter, a flight attendant for Southwest, sued the airline and the Transport Workers Union of America under Title VII for religious discrimination and retaliation, claiming (among other things) that she was terminated for her Christian anti-abortion advocacy on social media. Carter prevailed at trial.
After trial, “the court provided injunctive relief to Carter for the purpose of prohibiting similar religious discrimination against other flight attendants. In the same order, the court also directed both Southwest and the Union to provide Southwest flight attendants with notice of the jury’s verdict and its judgment, and to inform them of their Title VII rights against religious discrimination—including their right to express views on social media about abortion.”
“Southwest notified its flight attendants in response that ‘a federal court in Dallas entered a judgment against Southwest’ and ‘ordered us to inform you that Southwest does not discriminate against our Employees for their religious practices and beliefs.’ However, the district court found Southwest’s notice insufficient and held the airline in contempt of court before ordering religious-liberty training for several of Southwest’s attorneys involved in this case.”
The Fifth Circuit vacates in part. While affirming the jury verdict and contempt finding, the panel holds that the judge’s order to attend religious-liberty training was punitive rather than remedial and thus exceeded the district court’s power under civil contempt.
“Civil contempt sanctions must be ‘remedial’ in nature and ‘designed to compel future compliance with a court order’ by either ‘coerc[ing] the defendant into compliance’ or ‘compensat[ing] the complainant for losses sustained’ from non-compliance . . . . Criminal contempt sanctions, by contrast, are used to ‘punish defiance of the court and deter similar actions’ Penal in nature, there is no coercive component.”
“We see no need to examine the full sphere of acceptable sanctions against Southwest under the circumstances, but we agree that religious-liberty training would do little to compel compliance with the order or to compensate Carter. The attorneys ordered to attend training were not involved in the decision to terminate Carter, and no evidence offered at trial suggests they demonstrated animus against Carter or her religious beliefs . . . . Additionally, the training would not be limited to Title VII training but instead was to encompass topics irrelevant to securing compliance with a Title VII judgment.”
“Carter maintains that courts regularly require legal training ‘in the relevant subject area’ to support her claim that “Title VII training” secures Southwest’s compliance with the order. Courts do so, of course, only as a punitive remedy, not as a sanction for civil contempt. The cases Carter cites involve punishments under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a rule which serves a ‘much different purpose[]’ than civil contempt—which is, in short, ‘to punish.’”
“Courts are tasked with resolving limited questions and administering justice to the parties before them . . . . But when a court’s contempt sanction in a civil matter is both overbroad in scope and undoubtedly punitive in nature, the judiciary risks appearing contemptuous like the contemnor. In this civil case, the sanction plainly exceeded remedial bounds and sought to punish Southwest’s attorneys through a directive that did little to coerce the airline’s compliance with the district court’s judgment.”
“Punitive sanctions exceed the scope of a federal court’s civil contempt authority. We therefore VACATE the district court’s contempt order against Southwest.”