A former Delta Air Lines flight attendant says she was fired for sharing a cartoon of Donald Trump wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood on her personal social media, according to an employment discrimination lawsuit she filed.

The lawsuit says the flight attendant, Leondra Taylor, an African American woman, admitted to sharing the cartoon on her personal Facebook page. The image, which was created by editorial cartoonist Aislin, was originally published in the Montreal Gazette in fall 2020, and depicts a hooded Trump and then-candidate Joe Biden debating each other, with the moderator telling Trump, “Thank you, Mr. President, for wearing your mask.” During the first presidential debate that year, moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump to disavow white supremacists, to which he responded, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.”

Taylor’s lawsuit hopes to recover damages for what she says is Delta’s racial discrimination and retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits race discrimination in employment, and Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which prevents race discrimination when “mak[ing] and enforc[ing] contracts.”

Taylor’s post was discovered while Delta was reportedly looking through her Facebook page in regard to an allegation by another flight attendant, Vivian Nguyen, that Taylor had celebrated Nguyen’s termination in a Facebook post, according to the lawsuit. Taylor’s alleged post claimed that Nguyen was fired after she posted a photograph of Michelle Obama “next to a photo of a monkey dressed in similar clothes” with the caption, “His escape from pregnancy. . .” and appeared to agree with the post’s implications. Although Delta could not find Taylor’s alleged post celebrating Nguyen’s termination after sharing the Michelle Obama photograph, the company discovered the Trump cartoon, the lawsuit said.... Read More: Washington Post