Muslim couple from Libertyville files discrimination suit against United Airlines

A federal discrimination suit against United Airlines claims a flight crew arbitrarily removed a Muslim family from a plane at O'Hare International Airport nearly a year ago.

Mohamad and Eaman Shebley and their three children passed through security and boarded Flight No. 5811 for a spring break trip to Washington, D.C. in March 2016. The lawsuit alleges that the crew unfairly targeted the family and asked them to leave after the flight attendants told the parents their youngest daughter could not be seated in a booster seat.

United's parent company and SkyWest Airlines also are listed as defendants in the 15-page lawsuit. A SkyWest spokeswoman released a statement Saturday night.

"Both SkyWest and United hold our employees to the highest standards of professionalism and have zero tolerance for discrimination," the statement read. "We have not yet been served with the suit and cannot comment further on this pending litigation."

Phil Robertson, an attorney for the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, filed the suit Friday on behalf of the Libertyville husband and wife. The Muslim advocacy organization called for a formal apology from the airline last spring.

At the time, a statement from United said the family was originally scheduled to take a SkyWest flight operating as United Express.

"We rebooked them on a later flight because of concerns about their child's safety seat, which did not comply with federal safety regulations," the statement from April 2016 read.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

Mohamad Shebley asked a flight attendant for over-the-shoulder straps for their youngest child who was sitting in the booster seat next to to her mother as indicated by United's website, according to the lawsuit. The flight attendant told the father that the airline did not provide straps for its passengers.

Another flight attendant told Eaman Shebley, an accountant who wears a headscarf, that her daughter could not sit in the car booster seat, according to the lawsuit. The mother asked why, and the second flight attendant told her again that her daughter couldn't be in a booster, the suit states.

The first flight attendant then told the Shebleys that they needed to step off the plane. Mohamad Shebley, a clinical pharmacology director, asked the crew for an explanation, according to the complaint.

His wife removed the booster seat, but the flight attendants were no longer looking at the family and had walked toward the cockpit without answering the couple's questions, the lawsuit states.

The captain of the plane later said flight attendants had notified him that the Shebleys "were not following instructions regarding their child," according to the lawsuit.

The couple felt their "family was being unfairly targeted, given that they had followed

all the instructions, removed the booster seat, and were not being provided an explanation

as to why they now had to leave the plane."

The family the plane to avoid "any further emotional or psychological damage," the lawsuit states. On the jetway, the captain told the couple that he needed them to follow instructions no matter what they were, according to the complaint. The defendants placed the family on another United flight to Washington D.C.