Eleventh Circuit revives civil rights lawsuit brought to declare jet-bridge stops by law enforcement at Atlanta Airport unconstitutional

Client(s) Eric André and Clayton English

Jones Day and its co-counsel at the New York University School of Law Policing Project and Krevolin Horst secured a reversal of the district court’s dismissal of this civil rights lawsuit arising from Clayton County’s unconstitutional policy of detaining and searching passengers in airport jet bridges ostensibly searching for drugs. The plaintiffs, comedians Eric André and Clayton English, alleged that they were unlawfully racially profiled in connection with the jet bridge interdiction program run by Clayton County law enforcement at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Clayton County police officers stopped Mr. André and Mr. English on the jet bridge as they were attempting to board their flights, blocked them from continuing down the jet bridge, held their identification, and peppered them with questions about whether they were carrying illegal drugs. While Clayton County claims such stops are random, over a period from September 2020 through April 2021, 56% of the passengers Clayton County officers stopped (whose race was recorded) were Black, even though just 8% of United States airline passengers were Black. Plaintiffs alleged that the odds that this racial disparity was caused by random chance is infinitesimal. The Northern District of Georgia dismissed the case in September 2023, and Jones Day and its co-counsel appealed the dismissal to the Eleventh Circuit. In its ruling, the Eleventh Circuit found that Mr. André and Mr. English plausibly alleged violations of the Fourth Amendment by Clayton County. The Court specifically recognized the systemic nature of the program’s constitutional violations, explaining that “plaintiffs have plausibly alleged that the drug interdiction program itself calls for repeated violations of the Fourth Amendment.” However, the Court upheld the dismissal of the plaintiffs’ Equal Protection Clause claim, finding that despite the program’s allegedly “stark” discriminatory impact, the Complaint did not plausibly allege “that any individual defendant acted with a discriminatory purpose.” And the Court upheld the dismissal of the Fourth Amendment claims against the individual officers, concluding that the officers had qualified immunity. The case has returned to the district court, where litigation continues.

André v. Clayton County, Georgia, 148 F.4th 1282 (11th Cir. 2025)