Federal appeals court judges in Atlanta seemed skeptical Friday that Eric André and Clayton English could have walked away from law enforcement officers questioning them in a jet bridge at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
The judges are considering whether to revive a lawsuit the Black comedian-actors filed in 2022 against Clayton County and several of its officers, alleging their practice of searching passengers in jet bridges at the airport violated the U.S. Constitution and unlawfully targeted Black passengers.
Judge Elizabeth Branch asked a lawyer for the county how any airline passenger traveling post-9/11 would think they could refuse to answer questions or have their belongings searched when asked by law enforcement.
“Would anyone who’s stopped know they’re free to leave unless told?” Branch asked during a hearing in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Elissa Haynes, who represents the county and its officers in the case, said the searches were consensual and André and English were free to board their flights at any time during their separate encounters with the officers.
But Judge Jill Pryor pushed back.
“What about if someone has your identification and boarding pass and is blocking your way?” Pryor asked Haynes. “How are you going to be free to leave to get on that plane?”
The lawsuit by André and English was dismissed by a federal judge in September 2023, in large part because the judge said they couldn’t show they were seized at any point by the officers. Both André and English were cleared to board their flights after several minutes, the record shows.
André and English said they were separately stopped inside jet bridges while boarding Delta flights from Atlanta to Los Angeles in April 2021 and October 2020, respectively. They said plain-clothed county officers flashed their law enforcement badges, temporarily blocked them from boarding their flights, barraged them with questions about illegal drugs and took their identification and boarding passes.
English’s carry-on luggage was also searched by county officers before he was allowed to board, according to the complaint filed in the federal court in Atlanta in October 2022. The lawsuit alleged the county seized more than $1 million in cash from passengers stopped in jet bridges through the program.
In their complaint, André and English cited data from Clayton County showing 56% of passengers stopped by county officers inside jet bridges at the airport between September 2020 and April 2021 were Black, as well as a study showing 8% of American airline passengers are Black.
“It’s deeply troubling that in a city that has an affluent, successful Black population, officers are stopping individuals on jet bridges and basically shaking them down for cash,” attorney Barry Friedman, who represents André and English, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution outside the courthouse Friday.
Several Black celebrities, including Tyler Perry, Jamie Foxx, Taraji Henson and Sterling Brown, publicly supported André and English in their case, urging the appeals court to revive it.
Clayton County says its involvement in the jet bridge interdiction program at Atlanta’s international airport ended in June 2024. The county argued in the case that the encounters between passengers and its officers involved in the program were random and consensual.
“There would have been nothing to prevent them from physically boarding the airplane,” Haynes told the judges Friday. “Both this court and the U.S. Supreme Court have held that a police officer does not seize somebody just by questioning them and asking for identification.”
English, who lives in Atlanta, attended the hearing. He told the AJC he felt obligated to answer the officers’ questions and let them search through his belongings while other passengers looked at him as if he’d done something wrong.
Credit: Rosie Manins
Credit: Rosie Manins
“I felt like I didn’t have a choice but to go along,” English said. “The way it was set up with the police in my way, I would have had to push through the officers.”
When he dismissed the lawsuit, Judge Mark Cohen also found André and English had failed to show they were treated differently than similarly situated white passengers because of their race. He said the data they relied on did not show the race of all passengers on flights subject to searches by Clayton County officers.
Friedman told the judges Friday that county logs showed the searches were “racially motivated” and not random. He said the searches constituted seizures and the case was dismissed prematurely.
“You can see on the logs; it’s Black male, Black male, Black male, white woman, Black male,” Friedman said. “There’s a line of white people and they’re stopping the one who’s Black.”
It’s unclear when the court will decide the case.
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