- The Media Line - https://themedialine.org -

Airline Can’t Force Passengers To Change Seats

An Israeli court has ruled that asking a passenger to move their seat because of their sex constitutes discrimination and is prohibited. The ruling came in the case of El Al passenger Renee Rabinowitz, an 81-year-old Holocaust survivor who was flying the Israeli airline from Newark, NJ to Israel in 2015. The ultra-Orthodox man sitting next to her was not willing to sit next to a woman because of concerns about modesty. The flight attendant asked Rabinowitz to move, which she reluctantly did, but she later sued El Al. “Requesting a seat change on an airplane – before or after take-off – based on a passenger’s gender constitutes a breach of the Prohibition of Discrimination in Products,” Judge Dana Cohen-Lekach wrote. El Al is required to explain the decision to its employees and pay Rabinowitz $1700 in damages.