ANDRE V. CLAYTON COUNTY

Police in Clayton County, Georgia, operate a program at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport that, through racial profiling and coercive stops and searches, has violated the constitutional rights of scores of people, disproportionately Black people. The program consists of armed officers waiting in jet bridges—the narrow tunnels that connect airplanes to airport gates—to selectively intercept passengers, take their boarding passes and identifications, interrogate them before they board their flights, and search their carry-on luggage, all in the name of combatting drug trafficking.

Clayton County police calls these stops “consensual encounters” and “random,” but they are neither. The jet bridge stops rely on coercion—few if any airline passengers in the post-9/11 world, focused on boarding their flight and stuck in a narrow jet bridge, would feel at liberty to walk away from law enforcement officers who unexpectedly intercept their path, question them, and take their boarding pass and identification. And targets are selected disproportionately based on their race—during the relevant period, 56% of stopped passengers were Black (while only 8% of airline passengers are Black); the probability of this happening randomly is less than 100 trillion.

Our lawsuit, Andre v. Clayton County, seeks to put an end to this program of illegal stops, searches, and racial profiling. The plaintiffs are Eric André and Clayton English, both Black men and both well-known actors and comedians, were profiled and illegally stopped in nearly identical situations several months apart. They are represented by the Policing Project at NYU School of Law and pro bono counsel from the global law firm Jones Day, the law firm Lawrence & Bundy, and Canfield Law LLC.

The district court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss in September 2023.

In January 2024, the Policing Project at NYU School of Law, with its co-counsel, filed an appeal to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of Mr. André and Mr. English. A number of groups and individuals filed amicus briefs in support.