United Airlines is back in the middle of a religious discrimination fight after a former supervisor asked a federal court to revive her case. The dispute centers on whether the court should keep the lawsuit alive and move it to Illinois, where the airline is based and where the claims can be heard on the merits.
The case involves Christina DeBusk, a former 26-year Reservations Supervisor who says she was pushed out after refusing the COVID shot on religious grounds. Her objection was tied to the use of aborted fetal cell lines in the shot’s development and testing, and her legal team says the airline did not treat that objection fairly.
According to the filing, DeBusk is seeking relief under Title VII, which bars workplace discrimination based on religion. The requested outcome includes a ruling that United violated the law, along with reinstatement or, if that is no longer possible, front pay for lost wages and benefits.
A federal judge in Tennessee dismissed the case in July 2026, saying the court lacked jurisdiction because United is headquartered in Illinois. That ruling did not decide whether the airline actually violated DeBusk’s rights, which is why the request to transfer the case has become so important.
Liberty Counsel is arguing that the court should have gone one step further and weighed whether a transfer would serve the “interest of justice.” The group says Sixth Circuit precedent expects that analysis when a court finds it cannot keep a case, and it says the Tennessee court skipped that step.
The motion also points to another United case that took a different path in the same court. In that earlier matter, the judge transferred a nearly identical lawsuit to Northern Illinois instead of throwing it out, and the legal team says that makes the dismissal of DeBusk’s case look inconsistent.
That inconsistency matters because courts are supposed to treat similar facts in a similar way. When one worker gets a transfer and another gets a dismissal, it creates confusion about what the court will do next and leaves the impression that the rules are bending from case to case.
There is also a deadline problem hanging over the case. DeBusk filed her Title VII claim on time, but her 90-day right-to-sue window expired while the case was sitting in Tennessee, which could make it too late to start over in Illinois.
That timing issue is the heart of the “manifest injustice” argument. If the court keeps the dismissal in place, DeBusk could lose any chance to have her claims heard at all, not because the claims were found weak, but because the procedural clock ran out while the case was pending.
The lawsuit is one of three individual cases Liberty Counsel has brought against United over religious discrimination tied to the COVID shot. Two others, involving a pilot and a flight attendant, also say the airline ignored religious objections and failed to offer lawful accommodations.
Those cases are separate from the larger class action against United, which covers thousands of workers placed on unpaid leave after seeking accommodations. DeBusk’s case falls outside that class action because her situation involved different conditions placed on her request, including demands she says were unfair from the start.
Her legal team says United required verification from a third party to support her faith objections and treated remote supervisors differently from non-supervisory workers. That kind of split treatment is exactly what makes the case so contentious, because it suggests the company was not applying a single standard across the board.
Liberty Counsel says United’s response was not just strict, but retaliatory. The group argues the company denied DeBusk’s accommodation and then denied her request to retire, all because she would not go along with the shot mandate on conscience grounds.
Mat Staver, the group’s founder and chairman, said the case belongs in Illinois and should be heard there instead of being shut down on a technicality. He also argued that the transfer would give DeBusk a real shot at having her claims reviewed fairly, rather than being left with a paper loss and no courtroom answer.
