Mother accused of human trafficking while flying with daughter sues Southwest

Mary MacCarthy, a white mother from Los Angeles, filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against Southwest Airlines on August 3, 2023 in the District Court of Colorado, alleging a Southwest employee reported her to police as a suspected child trafficker of her own biracial 10-year-old daughter during an October 2021 flight, according to ABC7 New York.

The incident occurred on a Southwest flight from San Jose to Denver. MacCarthy's lawsuit alleges a Southwest employee told police mid-flight that her daughter might not actually be her daughter and could be a trafficking victim, based on what the suit describes as "racially charged information." Police met MacCarthy and her daughter upon arrival at Denver International Airport.

"If I can use my voice to make life a little bit easier for parents of color or children of color, even if it makes one person's life easier, I'm going to do it," MacCarthy said, according to ABC7 New York. Southwest Airlines "declined to comment on pending litigation," per the same report.

What the lawsuit alleges happened at the gate

According to the suit, MacCarthy's daughter "began to break down in tears" while officers questioned the pair after they disembarked. MacCarthy recorded parts of the interaction, and bodycam footage of the police response was later obtained through an open-records request, per the reporting reviewed.

A cited precedent

The lawsuit references a separate, similar January 2021 incident involving a white male passenger and his Black daughter, which MacCarthy's attorneys cite as part of a pattern. The available coverage does not detail whether that January 2021 incident also involved Southwest specifically or resulted in its own legal action.

What the lawsuit alleges about Southwest's employee reporting

The Washington Post reported that MacCarthy and her daughter were flying to Denver following the sudden death of MacCarthy's brother when the incident occurred, adding context the earlier ABC7 New York account did not include. According to the suit, officers who met the flight told MacCarthy they had been given "racially charged information" suggesting her daughter might be trafficked -- specifically, per the lawsuit, because MacCarthy is white and her daughter is Black, the officers were told the child could not be hers based on nothing more than their different skin tones.

The Hill's coverage reported that MacCarthy's suit accuses Southwest of failing to "correct the racist assumptions ... its employees make about mixed-race families traveling together," framing the incident as part of a broader pattern of profiling mixed-race families rather than an isolated employee error. MacCarthy has said she brought the lawsuit seeking "accountability" from Southwest, including changes to how the airline trains its flight attendants, according to that reporting.

Southwest's existing anti-trafficking training

Southwest had, in fact, expanded its human-trafficking identification training in the years around the flight in question, according to the airline's own newsroom materials -- an online curriculum aimed at helping employees understand what trafficking is, recognize potential warning signs and know how to act if they suspect a case, with specialized modules for customer-facing staff including flight attendants, pilots and ground employees. The airline also placed lavatory placards promoting a human-trafficking hotline on its aircraft, per the same materials. None of the retrieved reporting on MacCarthy's specific case indicates whether the employee who reported her had gone through that curriculum or what checklist, if any, prompted the report.

US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by ABC7 New York. It restores a story originally published on this site in August 2023; figures are as reported at the time.