Fired employee says United’s skies are unfriendly to Catholic flight attendants

LAS VEGAS — A fired United Airlines flight attendant says the carrier’s “friendly skies” turned decidedly hostile when she talked to a co-worker about her faith in gender theory.

The 28-year veteran employee said neither the airline nor the Association of Flight Attendants union would side with him in the face of an anonymous Twitter complaint that contained what he said were false allegations.

Ruben D. Sanchez Jr., 52, of Anchorage, Alaska wants to Raise $18,000 via GoFundMe To continue the fight to get your job back.

“I’m too young to retire and too old to start fresh,” the former jet-setter told The Post in a telephone interview.

He said he “took a pay cut out of his earnings with United” while serving as an active-duty member of the Air National Guard in Alaska.

Sanchez said his troubles began on a red-eye flight from Los Angeles to Cleveland on May 31, 2023.

He was trying to stay awake, he said, about a last-minute assignment, and ended up talking with another flight attendant about their shared Catholic faith — and the beginning of Pride Month the next day.

The annual gay-rights observance “is a big thing for the United States,” Sanchez said. The airline has “all these things about Pride, there are Pride flags everywhere” and “drag-queen DJs” are playing music at United’s Los Angeles terminal.

“It was absolutely innocent. ‘Let’s have a conversation so I can stay awake,'” Sanchez said.

But Sanchez was overheard by an unidentified person, who complained to the airline via Twitter.

“I said, ‘You know, being Catholic, we’re not really supposed to follow Pride,'” the now-former flight attendant said. “‘The Church will never believe that men give birth, that women have penises or that the Church should bless gay marriage because marriage is a sacrament, and it is between two men or two women or three people or whatever. Yes, not for.’ That’s all I said.”

Sanchez said the online complainant claimed, “I hate all black people,” and “I am proudly anti-trans” — which is not true, he told The Post.

Suspended with pay over unfounded tweet-complaint, Sanchez said a supervisor told him the airline would investigate his Twitter history.

That timeline revealed that Sanchez once posted a couple of Joan Rivers jokes about Elizabeth Taylor’s weight and posted a joke about plus-size pole Chris Christie, which one observer said was a joke Also shows disrespect towards “passengers of size”.

Sanchez said the airline also considered removing the “transgender triangle” from the Pride flag and his tweets about disagreement with global warming as problematic.

He was told that a humorous photo of him carrying a pilot over his shoulders “went viral” online which “made a connection” between his personal social-media posts and his job.

The Post sought comment from United Airlines, and the firm twice said via email, “We will not have anything to share about Sanchez’s case.”

Officials at the Association of Flight Attendants union headquarters, lawyers for United Airlines and local attorneys in Houston who initially represented Sanchez in the investigative process also did not respond to multiple calls and emails from The Post seeking comment.

This is not the first time the flight attendant union has done this Criticized for not supporting religiously observant staff.

The lawsuit was filed in January on behalf of the First Liberty Institute, a public-interest law firm. Two Alaska Airlines flight attendants who raised the question Carrier’s support for the Equality Act of 2021, a proposal that would add LGBTQ protections to federal civil rights law.

The lawsuit by Alaska Airlines employees alleged that the AFA-CWA Master Executive Council did not support the employees, but instead reported their comments to company executives.

First Liberty has asked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to review the case after a lower court ruled against the workers.

“Employers are becoming more hostile toward people of faith in the workplace, and you’re seeing it in a lot of different ways,” David Hacker, the group’s vice president of litigation, told The Post. “We’ve seen these types of situations crop up more and more at First Liberty, and it’s a troubling trend. , , , The law provides that employers cannot discriminate against you based on your religious beliefs or practices.

Hacker said corporate shareholders should back the corporate approach and where the federal government says companies “cannot discriminate against people based on their faith.”

“There is no optimistic way to change this. But there are certainly a lot of different tools in the toolbox, and we must use them all to make sure people of faith are protected,” he said.

Sanchez said because the union said it would not represent him in arbitration, he tried to raise about $15,000 to pay those costs — and failed.

He hopes to use the GoFundMe proceeds to cover ongoing legal bills and further his case.