A Vermont woman, who was thrown off an airplane for refusing to put a blanket over herself while she breast-fed her 1-year-old daughter, is suing Mesa Air Group.
The incident happened about three years ago and sparked national protests, or "nurse-ins" at 19 airports across the country.
The lawsuit claims that on October 13, 2006, then-27-year-old Emily Gillette was on a Delta Airlines flight from Burlington to New York with her family when she began breast-feeding her daughter, River.
Gillette claims in the lawsuit that her body was facing the aisle, with the baby's head covering any part of a breast that could be seen, when a flight attendant came to her with a blanket and asked her to cover up.
When Gillette refused, the flight attendant, according to the lawsuit, got whiny and asked her to cover up again, the Associated Press' Vermont bureau reports.
When Gillette refused, again, the flight attendant called a customer-service representative on the ground, who asked Gillette and her family to leave the plane as soon as it landed in New York (as if she weren't getting off the Burlington to NYC flight there, anyhow).
How does Mesa Air Group have anything to do with a Delta flight and a woman breast-feeding her daughter?
Freedom Airlines uses Mesa Air Group planes while under contract with Delta.
Calls to Mesa Air Group were not immediately returned.
Gillette seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages and claims in the suit that she "has since felt anxiety when she has breast-fed in places of public accommodation, and has felt inhibited from nursing her second child based on her experience."
Getting asked to do something like this can absolutely cause "anxiety" three years after the fact. You just have to talk to a lawyer first.
