81 years old Woman Filed a Lawsuit Against El Al Airline Over Gender Discrimination

A woman filed a lawsuit against the national airline of Israel over the airline's gender discrimination. The filed lawsuit stated that she was transferred from another seat after an ultra-Orthodox Jew complains he can't seat beside her.

According to New York Times, Renee Rabinowitz, 81 years old sued Israel's flag carrier El Al over the said incident on December while on a Newark to Tel Aviv flight. The retired lawyer and a Ph.D. holder in educational psychology complained she was unfairly removed from her seat in the business-class section on El Al Flight 028 after a "Hasidic or Haredi garb" shows up, she said.

The said fellow male passenger was assigned seated next to her. However, as an ultra-Orthodox Jewish, he told the flight attendant that he did not want to seat beside a woman. According to the man, a strict interpretation of Jewish law forbids any contact between unrelated men and women even by accident. She was then offered by a flight attendant to a better seat.

"This is behavior that systematically harms women's dignity, and action must be taken so incidents like this don't reoccur," she says. "It's a principle," USA Today quoted. She briefly argued with the passengers, however, she gave the sit and move to the flight attendant's offered new seat for her. She added on her lawsuit that she felt pressured about her moving.

The airline offered, instead, a $200 discount on Ms. Rabinowitz's next El Al flight. It insisted that there was no gender discrimination on El Al flights,that the flight attendant had made it clear to Ms. Rabinowitz that she was in no way obligated to move.

Rabinowitz said despite all her accomplishments and her age, which she also considered as her accomplishment, she said, she felt minimized, Independent reported. She had been visiting family in New York before boarding the Dec. 2 El Al flight home.

Born in Belgium, she fled with her family during the Nazi occupation in 1941. She had a religious upbringing, attended an Orthodox Jewish school in New York, where a strictly modest dress code applied.

Tags

Rabinowitz, gender discrimination, Retired Lawyer, ultra-Orthodox Jew, El Al Airline

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