A federal judge in Atlanta has cleared the way for more than 3,300 current and former Delta Air Lines pilots to jointly pursue claims that the airline failed to pay them for short-term military leave stretching back nearly two decades. The August 7 order certified two classes of pilots: one seeking back pay for leave already taken, and another seeking a court order forcing Delta to change its policy going forward.
The case, consolidated from five separate lawsuits and known as Reep v. Delta Air Lines, argues that the Atlanta-based carrier violated the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, a federal law that protects the job rights of military service members, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Per court order, Delta compensated pilots for other short-term absences such as jury duty, bereavement and sick leave, but the pilots allege the airline did not extend that same paid treatment to short-term military absences, which the carrier applied through its collective bargaining agreements.
According to court filings cited by the newspaper, Delta pilots took roughly 119,582 short-term military leave instances without receiving ordinary civilian wages, including about 3,163 such instances in 2007 alone and 966 in 2022. The dispute traces back more than five years before the class-certification decision, with pilot Patrick Randal Reep filing the original lawsuit in June 2021, followed by two amended complaints in March 2022.
Why Federal Law Treats Military Leave Like Jury Duty
USERRA, passed by Congress in 1994, generally requires employers to give service members on military leave the same non-seniority rights and benefits provided to employees on comparable non-military leaves, according to PRF Law. Federal regulations evaluate that comparability using a three-factor test weighing the duration of the leave, its purpose, and how much control the employee has over scheduling it, per research from Vensure.
That legal theory has been gaining ground in federal courts since February 2021, when the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals became the first federal appellate court to rule, in White v. United Airlines, that USERRA's rights-and-benefits requirement includes paid leave, as detailed by Quarles. The Eleventh Circuit, which governs federal courts in Georgia and therefore Delta's home turf, followed suit in June 2023, ruling in Myrick v. City of Hoover that short-term military duty was sufficiently comparable to paid administrative and jury duty leave, according to research from Lehr, Middlebrooks, Vreeland & Thompson.
A Rocky Road to Class Certification
The path to certification wasn't smooth for the Delta pilots. A court denied their first motion for class certification in 2023, then denied an amended motion in 2025, before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia granted certification on August 7, 2026. In its order, the court found that denying certification would not prejudice the plaintiffs, while also ruling that damages may ultimately need to be calculated individually for each pilot who took short-term military leave.
That individualized-damages ruling echoes a setback other airlines have faced. A federal judge decertified a nationwide pilot class against American Airlines in September 2025 after the Third Circuit had ruled a year earlier that a jury could find short-term military leave comparable to paid jury duty or bereavement leave, according to Transportation Law. The decertification, driven by wide variation in individual leave durations and frequencies, left only two named pilots' individual claims active in that case.
Other Airlines Have Already Settled for Millions
Delta isn't the first major carrier to face this kind of litigation. Southwest Airlines received preliminary approval in December 2025 for an $18.5 million class action settlement resolving claims from nearly 2,800 current and former employees, a deal litigators described as the largest reported USERRA class action settlement to date, according to VitalLaw. As part of that deal, Southwest agreed to provide service-member employees up to 10 days of paid short-term military leave annually from 2026 through 2030, per HRMorning.
Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air settled a similar case for $4.75 million in 2024 after the Ninth Circuit ruled that short-term military leave must be evaluated against comparable paid absences like jury duty, according to PRF Law. Southwest employees filed a similar lawsuit alleging failure to pay for military leave in 2025 as well. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, citing 2025 figures, reported the Delta class action could recover an average of $18.5 million per eligible employee, though a separate figure cited in the case pointed to roughly $4.4 million in potential back pay.
Pilots' Union Backs the Claims
The Delta Air Lines Pilots Association has voiced support for the pilots' position that the company's policy violates USERRA, while saying it will continue focusing on its members' military obligations. The certified class covers more than 3,300 pilots and stems from Delta pilots who filed suit alleging the airline failed to pay for short-term military absences over a class period spanning from 2007 through late 2022.
With certification now granted, Delta faces the prospect of defending both the back-pay claims from thousands of pilots and a forward-looking demand that it formally align its leave policies with federal law. Whether the airline will seek to challenge the class-wide damages structure, as American Airlines did successfully in 2025, remains an open question as the litigation moves forward.
