An Amtrak passenger heading from Seattle to Los Angeles was kicked off the train for cussing. They had purchased a premium seat (“roomette”) because she thought it would get her help with baggage based on the rail carrier’s website.
A dedicated First Class attendant will provide turndown service, assist with meals and help with luggage. All customers in private rooms receive complimentary lounge access at major stations, priority boarding and complimentary meals onboard.
She doesn’t visibly appear disabled, so she wasn’t surprised that when she asked for help, “The attendant himself was rolling his eyes and huffing and puffing.”
She was forced to carry her own bags and put them down each of the three times her ticket was checked, picking them back up, and winding up breathless. She muttered her frustration under her breath.
when I asked for help with my bags, I was confused as I paid the $1,200 for that luxury as I knew I needed it. So I ended up carrying most of my luggage and my ticket was checked 3 different times which is no issue but bending down and picking my bags back up multiple times is very difficult for me.
As the conductor (quite rudely) told me to pull my ticket out again I struggled getting all my bags down and quietly to myself said “fucking hell” in an exasperated manner kind of like when you stub your toe or lift a heavy weight or run up stairs and you say “holy shit that was tough” not at all directed towards her and I didn’t even think she could hear me as I could barely breathe.
The Amtrak employee immediately responded, “youre not boarding my train. I don’t allow curse words on my train.” Then the staffer “had a sheriff come and take down my ID.” According to the passenger, 10 others “tried to reason with her but she had the worst attitude” and she wouldn’t let the woman explain herself.
The woman swears (see what I did there?) that she wasn’t directing her frustration at the employee, or cursing at the employee. She says she ‘admitted she was wrong’ and she never put up a fight or suggested she’d continue cursing.
Since Amtrak doesn’t run a lot of frequencies Seattle to Los Angeles, she moved her trip to a different day – but was stuck without accommodations while she waited.
My first thought here is to request the police report before doing anything else. But this ejection makes me uncomfortable.
On the one hand, Amtrak can – and routinely does – try to bar riders for “obscene” or “profane” language. Amtrak’s Service Standards list “obscene language” as a reason to refuse carriage or eject a customer. However,
- Amtrak is government rail. And the Supreme Court held in Lebron v. National Railroad Passenger Corp. 513 US 374 (1995) that Amtrak is a government actor for First Amendment purposes. Speech that is merely offensive (e.g. “fuck” in Cohen v. California shouldn’t be actionable.
- Trains and platforms are non-public forums, so Amtrak can impose reasonable, viewpoint-neutral limits tied to passenger safety, order, or comfort – but can’t scrub speech it doesn’t like.
- Amtrak says conductors can refuse or remove passengers for “obscene language.” I’m not sure that holds up to a viewpoint-neutral rule in theory or as-applied here since profanity is not “obscenity” in any case.
The Supreme Court in Cohen protected a “Fuck the Draft” jacket because it was neither legally obscene (under Miller v. California) nor “fighting words.” A pure profanity ban targets content, and—seems irrationally broad (and likely selectively enforced).
If the passenger were shouting profanity at staff, or were harassing or threatening them, that would be a different matter. A passenger couldn’t be kicked off, though, for profanity on a shirt. I’m not sure a mere utterance is different. I’m not a lawyer, let alone one specializing in free speech law, but this seems to me an improper ejection off of government rail because an employee didn’t like the content of the passenger’s speech.
I’d be curious to here takes from readers more familiar with this area of law than I am.
(HT: @1x_PointsOnRent)
If she purchased a first class ticket, baggage assistance should have been provided regardless of her disability. The fault lies with Amtrak not providing the service that was paid for. Expect this to get progressively worse as watchdog agencies are being dismantled leaving consumers with no recourse.
Power trip by unaccountable steward working for a quasi govt agency.
Your “Supreme Court” ruling means nothing now that is controlled by the rightwing fascists. Now “law” is irrelevant, they rule to please the criminal acting as president.
OH enough of this political garbage Ray!
Instead of getting huffy, I would have expressed that “I thought my roomette was first class AND help with bags”. It’s okay to ask questions if you don’t understand.
The verbage is not clear on the website. First class does come with bag assistance, but the next sentence doesn’t say if her Roomette is considered first class.
With that being said, couldn’t Amtrak offer assistance to folks that need it for a cash tip?
This Amtrak employee was probably formerly employed by either Spirit or Frontier. Sounds like some of the trash they would hire.
@ Ray — Ignore Claire. Thank you.
Amslack has many a rough around the edges team member. Certainly not all
There have been a small percentage of nice helpful team members through the years too
I avoid them as much as I possibly can.
Most of their train stations are ghetto/dated sad condition not cleaned bird droppings & litter everywhere run down trains graffiti etc. Their signage appalling and confusing in select stations where some trains aren’t even listed or shown.Station Phones for assistance inoperative even in an emergency and elevators sometimes out of order or in offensive condition.
One will find housing challenged folks living and bathing in their station restrooms and it smells really bad..
Some of Amtraks employees can be rude and threatening as they generally come from severely underprivileged families that lack kindness empathy and basic common sense.
They didn’t have good influences or role models in their lives
That perception is from having experienced their station at Newark Airport and others
Downtown LA is bad but not nearly as bad as Newark.
When I travel with them ever which is rare I think of some of them as former released prisoners’ now working in society and try to be as nice as I can so I don’t have any problems in my interaction’s and walk on eggshells around them. The slightest anything may set them off. Again this is not all their team members but unfortunately far too many that are lazy or on power trips. Them against us mentality
Our country could do much better than what we have. Sad situation especially for any physically challenged disabled persons who depend on assistance.
“You are not boarding MY train. I do not allow curse words on MY train”. What an attitude and what a power trip. Two little words of frustration by a passenger who would not have looked like a threat and was not refusing to comply. Totally different than a passenger cussing you out and being disruptive. The F word has gotten so common, it means no more than heck or darn to many people.
People should learn to swear in Tamil, Navaho, Xhosa or similar rare language
Gary, if @Ray doesn’t wish to comment on travel issues, could you please remove him from the site ?
Government-run entity…enough said.
@claire I guess not everyone can be as calm and reserved as you. The conductor was out of line…period. There is nothing worse than employees who are rude, unhelpful and drunk with power. It’s time we all said “enough.”
And I’m a little curious why you don’t call out people with political POV that post incendiary comments.
Privatize Amtrak. Why isn’t Donald Trump picking this exceptionally low hanging fruit to privatize, that just happens to be Joe Biden’t favorite thing in the world?
I’m reminded of Indiana Jones on the Zeppelin… “No ticket.”
@Mak – They won’t privatize it because it serves a large volume of rural routes that aren’t viable for air travel but remain popular with key constituencies. These routes lose money, and a private operator would need to cut them, keeping only profitable ones in the Northeast Corridor and maybe a few others like the Hiawatha, Cascades, Downeaster, and Carolinian. From the 1930s to 1950s, automakers like GM dismantled streetcars in favor of buses to drive car sales. This, along with the 1956 federal highway program and tight railroad regulation, led to passenger rail’s decline. Amtrak was created in 1971 to preserve intercity service. It has never been profitable and likely never will be.
Me: Objection – move to strike – all of the comments are not responsive to the question.
Judge: Sustained. Jury will disregard.
What most people think – that Amtrak is a government agency – is not true. It is a private but federally chartered corporation backstopped by the federal government. The backstop is that, when Amtrak loses enough money, Congress steps in and gives it more.
The woman described has several problems: First, suing Amtrak usually doesn’t work, well, because Amtrak put a mandatory arbitration clause into its contract of carriage after the I-5 disaster in Washington State about 8-9 years ago. The question is whether the arbitration clause covers this. Most plaintiff side lawyers hate arbitration because they think it limits large payouts. It doesn’t necessarily, but it adds complexity both substantively and procedurally.
Second, suing the train employee would be akin to suing a flight attendant for kicking one off a flight. Possible but …
She could try to find someone to bring an ADA claim, if one exists. But those claims are fact intensive. She can consult with the State anti-discrimination agency in the state where she bought her ticket. Or, she could look at a small claims action for her out of pocket losses.
I don’t know what the current iteration of Amtrak’s arbitration clause is, or what the venue and choice of law provisions are (and I don’t want to know). But consider it akin to dealing with any other massive private company.
@Retired Lawyer “What most people think – that Amtrak is a government agency – is not true. It is a private but federally chartered corporation backstopped by the federal government. The backstop is that, when Amtrak loses enough money, Congress steps in and gives it more.”
Amtrak was created by the Rail Passenger Service Act. It is government-owned (there are some legacy common shares held by some freight railroads but in practice the federal government controls 100% of the equity). It is federally funded. The Board of Directors of Amtrak is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and the DOT Secretary or their designee sits on the board in ex-officio capacity. Furthermore, as a state entity, federal law caps some tort liability.
@Mike Hunt Nothing you’ve said is a basis to refrain from privatizing Amtrak. If the new owners drop unprofitable services, that’s a positive, not a negative. The rest of us owe people who choose to live in rural areas exactly nothing for their choices, and if there is no train services to these places because not enough people use the service that’s the way the world is supposed to work.
@Mak – I don’t disagree with you in that regard. But what you have failed to understand is that privatization of Amtrak would be a political disaster for many elected officials, which is why it’ll almost certainly never happen.
@Mak and @Mike Hunt
So, in other words, funds from blue states are supporting red rural states. Put another way, socialism is fine when it benefits red states. Got it.
Reminds me of Mace quietly begging last week for the clean energy law repeal to not affect her SC Mercedes Benz plant after publicly crowing about how it’s terrible and needs to disappear. They don’t care about anything other than being reelected.
@TheJetsFan Yes, Republicans are fine with the fact that tax dollars tend to flow disproportionately from urban to rural (so, commonly blue to red states). SALT deduction limitations has no effect on lower earners, but causes higher earners to pay more income tax. You’d think Democrats would like that. But, SALT limitations has it greatest effect in high-tax states. Thus, blue-state Democrats (but not AOC) want to repeal the limitation, thus reducing the tax bill of their (and other states’) richer citizens. If hypocrisy was a bodily fluid, a black light in Congress would show everyone pure white.
First class does include roomettes, along with the bedrooms. The first time I rode Amtrak was the ONLY time I ever got my luggage carried. That was also the ONLY time I ever had a really friendly helpful attendant. Since then, I’ve ridden many times (mostly first class) but service & attitudes are mediocre at best. Often, they don’t bother putting the beds down either, unless you physically go hunt them down. Tipping these well-paid employees, whether at the beginning or at the end, doesn’t change anything either. These employees don’t seem to like their jobs. The rest rooms and cars are not kept clean either. I’ve learned to bring cleaning wipes with me. Ride them with low expectations
All sleeping car accommodation nationwide is first class, along with the first class seating on Acela Express trains (which operate Washington-New York-Boston).
The employee who denied her boarding needs some serious retraining on how to serve passengers, including that not all disabilities are readily visible. I look fine, but I have balance issues and occasional difficulty walking, neither of which can be determined by looking at me as I don’t use mobility aids nor am I in a wheelchair.
Ruining a passenger’s trip because you feel personally disrespected is reprehensible.
@TheJetsFan – The counterargument is that Amtrak is a federally funded transportation service and not a political welfare program… that it exists to serve national needs, not to reward or punish states based on how they vote. From that perspective, rural routes, though unprofitable, are maintained not out of charity to “red states” but because they connect remote communities with no other viable intercity travel options. This position would likely advocate that it is not “socialism for red states,” but rather the federal government fulfilling its role of providing essential infrastructure where the private sector won’t, and that calling it hypocrisy misses the point that services like Amtrak are designed to benefit all Americans, regardless of geography or politics. Personally, I’m not a fan of subsidies in general, as I think they often distort efficient resource allocation. But I can appreciate where the other side is coming from.