Eric André lawsuit over drug search at Atlanta airport revived by appeals court

A federal appeals court decided to reverse the dismissal of a lawsuit comedians Eric André and Clayton English filed in 2022 claiming their Fourth Amendment rights were violated.

A federal appeals court decided to reverse the dismissal of a lawsuit comedians Eric André and Clayton English filed in 2022 claiming their Fourth Amendment rights were violated.

André and English alleged in their lawsuit that Clayton County officers stopped them in two separate incidents at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport inside the jet bridge as they were about to board flights. The Black celebrities say they were told to hand over their boarding passes and IDs and were asked whether they were carrying illegal drugs.

The pair allege the officers violated their Fourth Amendment rights "to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures," according to the federal appeals court opinion published Friday. They also claimed that the officers stopped them based on their race.

The district court dismissed their lawsuit in 2023, citing the plaintiffs' "failure to plausibly allege any constitutional violations," and all defendants, including Clayton County and the police department's chief, were protected by immunity. But the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its opinion that it found that André and English "plausibly alleged that Clayton County subjected them to unreasonable searches and seizures" and reversed the dismissal "after careful review."

The court affirmed the rest of the district court's dismissal, which includes the celebrities' claim that the officers stopped them based on their race.