You’re looking at a $240,000 shirt. At least that’s what it cost the TSA and JetBlue. The shirt’s owner (and wearer), Iraqi-American Raed Jarrar, received a sizable settlement from the government and the airline last month.
Why the payment? Long-time readers may remember this case from an earlier post:
JetBlue and a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) official, identified as “Inspector Harris,” would not let Raed Jarrar board his flight at John F. Kennedy Airport until he agreed to cover his t-shirt, which read “We Will Not Be Silent” in English and Arabic script. Harris told Jarrar that it is impermissible to wear an Arabic shirt to an airport and equated it to a “person wearing a t-shirt at a bank stating, ‘I am a robber.’”Lovely metaphor. Added bonus: Jarrar says that, after he relented and donned an additional shirt, jetBlue tore up his boarding pass, which had him seated near the front, and gave him a new boarding pass to sit at the very back of the plane. How nice of them — and how symbolic.
The airline and the TSA admitted no wrongdoing, though they agreed to the payment:
Neither the Transportation Safety Administration officials or JetBlue admitted having done anything wrong, and the settlement agreement states that it “is not an admission of liability or fault or wrongdoing or responsibility.”
The agreement says that the government employees, Garfield Harris and Franco Trotta, “disavow any allegation” that they had violated Mr. Jarrar’s rights, and said that “their actions were at all times reasonable and within their discretion and authority.”
Bryan Baldwin, a spokesman for the airline, said the company was “pleased” with the settlement, although it denied Mr. Jarrar’s version of events. The company settled, Mr. Baldwin said, “to stop incurring future legal cost.”
Not admitting responsibility? Fine. But money talks. And hopefully both the government and the airlines (not just JetBlue) will wise up from this experience, and can teach their employees that shirts aren’t dangerous, regardless of whether or not you understand what’s written on them.
Related:
- Dangerous shirts see their day in court
- Would an anti-Tony Blair shirt get me in trouble in the U.S.?
- Short hops – August 23, 2006 – JetBlue rewards one flyer a free t-shirt (in exchange for his civil liberties)
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January 9th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Do these people not receive sensitivity training? Or customer service training, at the very least?
January 9th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
…or critical thinking skills?
January 11th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Oh, I hadn’t heard about this – unbelievable! What astonishingly ignorant people. Arabic calligraphy has become such a key part of contemporary design, appearing all over the place in so many different forms, I’m astounded this was a first for them, but I’m so pleased it’s the last time they’ll get to exhibit their profound racism.
January 12th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
I remember this. Glad to see they had to pay for their ignorance. There’s a lot of very dangerous scapegoating going around as of late. Just a couple weeks ago nine Muslims, three of them children between the ages of 2 and 7 were thrown off an AirTran plane because two of the adults had been having a conversation about where was the safest place to sit on the plane, in case of an accident, away from the engine or by the wing? It’s an inane conversation, and if anyone else had had the very same conversation, like myself because I’m a white girl from the south, no one would have batted an eye, but because of their ethnicity people around them automatically assumed they were terrorists.
The FBI even cleared them with the airline, saying that they had no records and were law abiding citizens. The airline still refused to put them on another flight, until there was public outrage over it. By that time they had re-booked with another airline.
Some might want to look back at history and see what can happen when scapegoating entire populations of people becomes fashionable. One might ask the Jews of Germany in the 1930s and 40s how *that* turned out.