January 18, 2022
Disabled Kentucky Frequent Flyer Sues
CDC & 5 Airlines to Stop Mask Mandates
Man Who’s Fainted Twice While Masked
Demands $2.2 Million for Illegal Discrimination
Jan. 18, 2022
By LUCAS WALL
LOUISVILLE, Kentucky – A Kentucky man who must fly to California and back for work every 12 days filed suit today against the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention to block the agency’s Federal Transportation Mask Mandate, which has been in effect for nearly a year. The lawsuit also demands nearly $2.2 million in damages from American Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines, Spirit Airlines, and United Airlines for refusing his medical exemption on numerous flights as part of a conspiracy to interfere with the civil rights of the disabled.
Michael Faris, 35, of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, medically can’t tolerate wearing a face mask. Faris fainted July 20, 2021, while forced to obstruct his breathing on an American flight from Louisville to Dallas and again Oct. 21, 2021, while in the jetway attempting to board a United flight from Ontario, California, to Denver. United refused to allow him on board. Faris rebooked with American, who then banned him from the airline for requesting a mask exemption at the check-in counter. JetBlue and Southwest also banned Faris when he applied for mask exemptions, canceling his tickets without his consent.
This case is believed to be the first in the nation to challenge CDC’s mask mandate and airlines’ discriminatory policies regarding face coverings in the same lawsuit.
“The evidence is indisputable that the Airline Defendants since Summer 2020 have illegally discriminated against millions of flyers with disabilities by refusing to grant any mask exemptions and/or requiring such an onerous exemption process that makes it impossible for those of us medically unable to cover our face to obtain a waiver,” according to the 185-page complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky in Louisville. “The disabled are essentially banned from using the nation’s commercial aviation system unless we don a mask, creating a danger to our health. I have fainted and suffered physical injury twice while forced to obstruct my oxygen intake.”
Faris works as a helicopter maintenance supervisor for a company based in Laverne, California. He must travel by commercial airlines every 12-14 days as he typically works 12 days on site in California or elsewhere in the western United States, then 12 days home in Kentucky, and repeating. He previously worked for a commercial airline as a mechanic.
“I never thought I would have to file a lawsuit against the very industry I gave four years of my life to, ensuring their planes were safe to soar the skies while carrying millions of passengers a day,” Faris said. “The airlines must be held accountable for discriminating against disabled passengers. This is about the freedom to make choices that are best for your own health and not being forced to do something to the contrary by a private business with no knowledge of one’s personal health matters.”
CDC, its parent agency (the Department of Health & Human Services), and the five airlines “ignored countless scientific and medical studies and articles showing that face masks are totally ineffective in reducing coronavirus spread but are harmful to human health in at least 68 ways,” according to the complaint. “Congress never intended for the Executive Branch to have the authority to promulgate this policy – and even if it did, it’s unconstitutional. CDC and HHS may not exercise their authority in a manner that is inconsistent with the administrative structure that Congress enacted.”
Faris demands damages of $1,014,888 against American, $809,324 against United, $170,376 against Southwest, $135,188 against JetBlue, and $35,188 against Spirit. Also charged are numerous yet-to-be-named employees of the five airlines who participated in the conspiracy to deny the disabled mask exemptions. Faris asks for damages of $3,500 per flight from each individual airline employee who should have known the mask policies are illegal but failed to stop them.
He has a doctor’s note exempting him from mask mandates, which the five airlines have refused to honor.
“Due to my Generalized Anxiety Disorder, it’s harmful to cover my face,” Faris wrote in the complaint. “When I am forced by the defendants to muzzle myself, I feel light-headed with tunnel vision, experience nausea, major migraine headaches from the mask pulling at my ears, watering and burning eyes, dizziness, and dehydration. Covering my nose and mouth has led to severe panic attacks and two fainting episodes during air travel.”
Faris’ complaint charges CDC and HHS with 11 counts of violating the Constitution, federal law, and international treaties by imposing a requirement that all passengers and employees throughout the nation’s entire public-transportation system obstruct their oxygen intake. He charges the five airlines and their employees with 26 counts of conspiracy, violating federal and California anti-discrimination laws, breach of contract, reckless endangerment, practicing medicine without a license, invasion of privacy, deceptive and misleading trade practices, and fraudulent misrepresentation.
He asserts CDC has no legal authority to require passengers wear masks because Congress has never enacted such a law, the agency failed to observe the notice-and-comment procedure required before ordering the FTMM, the mandate applies to intrastate travel and overrides 43 states’ no-mask policies in violation of the 10th Amendment, its assignment of FTMM enforcement and exemption powers to private companies such as airlines violates the Fifth Amendment, the FTMM interferes with the constitutionally guaranteed freedom to travel, and the mask policy doesn’t comply with a federal law that protects airline passengers from discrimination.
Faris is part of a group of 14 flyers from nine states and the District of Columbia who filed six lawsuits in October charging the Transportation Security Administration with exceeding its legal authority by continuing to extend a requirement that all public-transportation passengers don face masks. He’s the lead petitioner in Faris v. TSA, which is before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
“As a person who has endured physical injury by the airlines due to these unconstitutional mandates, I am standing up for people like me,” Faris said. “We cannot allow TSA, CDC, and the airlines to continue down the path of discriminating against Americans with medical conditions who cannot wear a face covering.”
The complaint attacks CDC for: 1) failing to take into account that airplane cabins pose little risk for coronavirus spread; 2) failing to consider the voluminous scientific and medical research showing masks have proven to be totally ineffective in reducing COVID-19 spread and deaths; 3) failing to regard that masks pose serious health risks to humans forced to wear them; 4) ignoring that mask mandates have created chaos in the skies and on the ground, endangering aviation and transit security; 5) ignoring that the FTMM violates the Food, Drug, & Cosmetic Act by forcing travelers to wear Food & Drug Administration unauthorized or Emergency Use Authorization medical devices without their consent; 6) failing to consider that the FTMM violates the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights by interfering with several fundamental human rights established by treaty; 7) failing to consider that the FTMM violates the Convention on International Civil Aviation by requiring the disabled to submit medical certificates to obtain mask exemptions; and 8) failing to consider that masks damage the environment.
The case is Faris v. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, No. 3:22-cv-23. It has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Benjamin Beaton, who was appointed by President Donald Trump.
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