Nearly three years after the man in Row 25 of the U.S. Airways flight jotted his concerns about six “suspicious Arabic men” on a piece of paper and handed it to a flight attendant, the legal battle spawned by the note is over.
Six Muslim imams kicked off a U.S. Airways flight at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, detained and then released have settled their federal civil rights suit against the airline, the public commission that runs the airport and the FBI.
The settlement was reached after a court-ordered negotiating session that lasted more than seven hours Monday at the federal courthouse in St. Paul. Its terms are confidential and will remain so even after the document is finalized and filed with the court, lawyers in the case said.
The settlement left neither side declaring outright victory, just relief.
“We’re glad it is finally resolved,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which represented the imams, or prayer leaders. “I can’t give any details other than to say the case was resolved to the satisfaction of all parties and we view it as a victory for justice and civil rights.”
“We’re just confirming the settlement. We’re not going to comment,” said Valerie Wunder, a spokesman for U.S. Airways.
The Metropolitan Airports Commission issued a statement saying its officers “did what they believed was appropriate to ensure the safety of travelers based on the information available at the time.”
The statement also said the commission’s insurance company settled on MAC’s behalf.
The plaintiffs and defendants engaged the talents of 12 lawyers in five states, from New York to California.
The imams claimed they had been discriminated against by the airline and airport police caught up in a post-9/11 fervor that targeted people who appeared to be Muslims of Middle Eastern descent. In response, lawyers for the airline and airports commission said their employees acted appropriately.
In January, the U.S. Department of Transportation said that while the airline’s decision to kick the imams off the plane “could be perceived by some as discriminatory in this circumstance,” the agency believed the decision was reasonable “based on information available to the captain at the time.”
