The legal battle over alleged unlawful searches and seizures at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is set to continue for comedians Eric André and Clayton English. A federal appeals court has ruled that the duo can pursue parts of their civil rights lawsuit against the Clayton County Police Department. This development reverses a district court's dismissal from last year.
André and English have accused the police of stopping them based on their race during boarding at the airport. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals found, last Friday, that the plaintiffs "plausibly alleged that Clayton County subjected them to unreasonable searches and seizures," as reported by FOX 5 Atlanta. The court, however, did not support the claim that their rights under the Equal Protection Clause were violated due to insufficient evidence of discrimination because of race.
According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the appeals court criticized the defense's theory that the interactions with André and English were consensual. They highlighted the fact that their travel documents were taken and they weren't informed they could leave. The two were stopped as they were boarding flights to Los Angeles in separate incidents in 2020 and 2021.
Claims have been made that during an eight-month period, more than half of the 402 passengers stopped by the Clayton police on jet bridges were Black, which is disproportionately high compared to their representation among the airport's domestic travelers. "The odds of that racial breakdown occurring randomly is less than one in one hundred trillion," Barry Friedman, a lawyer for André and English, said in a statement obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
