Comedians Eric André and Clayton English have filed a lawsuit after they say officers at the Atlanta airport singled them out because they are Black and grilled them about drugs as other passengers watched.
Comedian Eric André at a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Atlanta, on Oct. 11, 2022.Comedians Eric André and Clayton English are challenging a police program at the Atlanta airport they say violates the constitutional rights of airline passengers, particularly Black passengers, through racial profiling and coercive searches just as they are about to board their flights.
While the stated purpose of the program is to fight drug trafficking, the lawsuit says, drugs are rarely found, criminal charges seldom result, and seized cash provides a financial windfall for the police department. Police records show that from Aug. 30, 2020, to April 30, 2021, there were 402 jet bridge stops, and the passenger’s race was listed for 378 of those stops. Of those 378 passengers, 211, or 56%, were Black, and people of color accounted for 258 total stops, or 68%, the lawsuit says.
English was stopped while flying from Atlanta, where he lives, to Los Angeles for work on Oct. 30, 2020, the lawsuit says. André had finished a shoot for HBO’s “The Righteous Gemstones” and was traveling from Charleston, South Carolina, to his home in Los Angeles on April 21, 2020, when he was stopped after a layover in Atlanta.
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