Liberty Counsel filed a motion requesting the U.S. District Court of Eastern Tennessee amend its order that dismissed a Title VII religious discrimination lawsuit against United Airlines and transfer the case to an Illinois federal court. 

In July 2026, a federal judge dismissed the case brought by former 26-year Contact Center Reservations Supervisor Christina DeBusk, who was adversely denied retirement and fired for refusing the COVID-19 shot. She objected to the shot due to her religious objections to the use of aborted fetal cell lines in the shot’s manufacture and testing. Liberty Counsel is ultimately seeking a judgment that declares the airline’s religiously discriminatory actions violated Title VII. The lawsuit also requests DeBusk’s reinstatement, or alternatively, front pay that would cover any future wages and benefits she would have likely lost because of the unlawful firing.

Even though DeBusk lived and worked remotely in Tennessee during her employment with United Airlines, the court found a lack of jurisdiction since the airline is headquartered in Illinois. The motion seeks the Tennessee federal court alter its dismissal judgment and transfer the case to the U.S. District Court of Northern Illinois where that court’s personal jurisdiction over the airline is unquestionable. The jurisdictional dismissal did not deliver a ruling on the merits of DeBusk’s Title VII claims.

In the motion, Liberty Counsel argues that legal precedent from the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals requires a lower court that finds a lack of jurisdiction to determine whether transfer would be “in the interest of justice.” However, the lower court dismissed the case without performing that analysis, wrote Liberty Counsel. 

The motion also emphasized the District Court of Eastern Tennessee had previously transferred a nearly identical case against United (Panaro v. United Airlines) to the District Court of Northern Illinois. By dismissing DeBusk’s case then creates “inconsistent” outcomes in “materially” similar cases, stated the motion.

“Deciding two materially identical cases in opposite ways—transferring one action against United while dismissing the other—undermines ‘uniformity and predictability’ from this Court’s decisions as it leaves litigants unable to predict how similar facts will fare in the same court.”

Additionally, Liberty Counsel noted the dismissal creates a “manifest injustice” in another way. While DeBusk filed her original Title VII claim in a timely manner, her 90-day right-to-sue period granted by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission expired while the case was pending in the Tennessee court. Since that period has expired, DeBusk may be time-barred from filing a new case in Illinois whereby her Title VII claims may receive no resolution on the merits.

The court can avoid this consequence and “cure the injustice” by amending its judgment to transfer the case, concluded Liberty Counsel.

DeBusk v. United Airlines is one of three individual lawsuits against United Airlines by Liberty Counsel involving unlawful religious discrimination. The other two lawsuits are Gates v. United Airlines and Hampton v. United Airlines which allege the airline similarly violated Title VII by refusing to accommodate religious exemptions that did not present undue hardships on the company.  

These lawsuits are separate cases from the nationwide class action suit Sambrano v. United Airlines. In June 2024, a federal judge in Texas granted class action status to more than 2,200 United employees who had received some form of religious accommodation and who were put on indefinite, unpaid leave for choosing not to get the shot. Sambrano is one of the largest class action cases ever filed against a private employer. However, DeBusk’s Title VII case falls outside the scope of this class action suit because United Airlines put unlawful conditions on her religious accommodation request. United required DeBusk to provide verification from a third-party to corroborate her religious beliefs and required remote supervisors like DeBusk to get vaccinated but did not require non-supervisory employees to do so. When she objected to the unlawful demands, United denied her religious accommodation request and her request to retire indicating its actions “were punitive and retaliatory rather than driven by any legitimate business necessity” and were in violation of Title VII, concluded Liberty Counsel.

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “Christina DeBusk originally filed the case in Tennessee in good faith based on an unsettled jurisdictional question regarding remote employees. However, the U.S. District Court of Northern Illinois is a proper venue under Title VII since United Airlines is headquartered there. United intentionally and willfully disregarded DeBusk’s rights by terminating her and punitively denying her retirement for refusing to violate her conscience over an experimental injection. Dismissing DeBusk’s case may permanently extinguish her Title VII claims due to expired time constraints for refiling a new case, but transferring her existing case to Illinois would give a venue to hear her case on the merits and serve the interests of justice. Employers cannot force employees to choose between their faith and their livelihood.”