Title VII of the Civil Rights Act; Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA); The Railway Labor Act (RLA); 45 USC §§ 151, 181–82; Subject-matter jurisdiction; Emswiler v CSX Transp, Inc; Virts v Consolidated Freightways Corp of DE; Collective bargaining agreement (CBA)

[This appeal was from the ED-MI.] The court affirmed the district court’s ruling that it lacked jurisdiction to hear the Title VII and ADA claims raised by a group of plaintiffs (the Pilot Plaintiffs) where they were “minor disputes” under the RLA and could not be fully resolved without interpreting the parties’ CBA. The Pilot Plaintiffs sued their employer, defendant-Kalitta, for civil rights violations relating to the company’s COVID vaccination requirements. The district court ruled that their Title VII and ADA claims for failure to accommodate and for perceived disability discrimination were “minor disputes” that, pursuant to the RLA (which governs the airline industry), were required to go through arbitration under the CBA. The district court found that it could not rule on the claims because that would require it to interpret the CBA. The court agreed, citing Emswiler. Kalitta argued that granting the Pilot Plaintiffs’ requested accommodations would result in its violating the CBA. The court explained that under Virts, “requiring an employer to violate a CBA by taking actions that would affect seniority provisions can impose an undue hardship on that employer.” It held that “[d]etermining whether adjusting flight schedules would constitute a sufficiently undue hardship to Kalitta would necessarily require a court to interpret the CBA to determine whether, and to what extent, senior pilots’ bidding preferences would be impacted.” Thus, the court concluded the district court was precluded from hearing the claims. It further determined that the Pilot Plaintiffs forfeited their “intentional discrimination” claim where they failed to sufficiently plead it.