Flight Attendant Who Wouldn't Serve Booze Suspended

A flight attendant who stopped serving passengers alcohol after she converted to Islam says things were going perfectly until a colleague complained. Charee Stanley says that after she found out that her faith didn't allow her to serve booze, her supervisor at ExpressJet suggested that she work out an arrangement with other flight attendants to handle alcohol requests, CNN reports. But after the complaint was received, the airline ditched its religious accommodation, placed Stanley on 12-month unpaid leave, and told her she could be fired when the year was up, according to a lawyer for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The lawyer tells CNN that the arrangement with the airline had worked "beautifully and without incident" until the complaint from another flight attendant was filed. She tells Detroit News that the complaint seemed Islamophobic, with the other attendant also complaining about Stanley's headscarf and the fact that she carried a book with "foreign" writings. Stanley has filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Michigan, the AP reports. ExpressJet says it is "an equal opportunity employer with a long history of diversity," though it won't comment on the particulars of the case. (United Airlines disciplined a flight attendant who refused to serve a Muslim woman an unopened Diet Coke.)