Lawsuit revealed Clayton County police's airport jet-bridge unit disproportionately stopped Black travelers, seized over $1M in cash

On October 11, 2022, two travelers filed a federal lawsuit against Clayton County, Georgia, revealing that the county's police department had run an airport "jet bridge interdiction" unit that disproportionately stopped Black passengers at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. The suit, brought with the Policing Project at NYU School of Law and pro bono counsel, sought a declaration that the jet-bridge stop program -- which positioned officers between the gate and the aircraft door to intercept passengers, question them about drugs, and in some cases search their bags -- violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.

Drawing on records obtained through Georgia's Open Records Act, the lawsuit documented 402 jet-bridge stops by Clayton County police between August 30, 2020, and April 30, 2021. Of the 378 stops with a passenger's race recorded, 56% were Black, compared with roughly 8% of U.S. air travelers nationally. Despite the volume of stops, the program produced only three drug seizures -- about 10 grams of drugs from one passenger, suspected THC gummies from another, and unprescribed pills from a third -- while officers seized more than $1 million in cash and money orders from 25 passengers, nearly all of whom were allowed to continue traveling without charge.

The two named plaintiffs had each been stopped under the program before filing suit -- one on October 30, 2020, the other on April 21, 2021 -- and Clayton County Police Department defended both stops in a written statement as "consensual" and "random," saying passengers voluntarily answered questions and, in one instance, consented to a luggage search officers ultimately did not conduct.

Updates

2023-09 — District court dismissed the lawsuit [3]

In September 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia granted Clayton County's motion to dismiss the suit.

2024-01 — Plaintiffs appealed to the Eleventh Circuit [3]

In January 2024, the Policing Project and co-counsel appealed the dismissal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit; the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Institute for Justice, the ACLU of Georgia, and other groups filed amicus briefs supporting the appeal.

2025-08-15 — Eleventh Circuit reinstated Fourth Amendment claims [3, 5]

On August 15, 2025, a three-judge Eleventh Circuit panel unanimously reinstated the plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment claims, ruling the suit plausibly alleged the interdiction program directed officers to conduct unreasonable seizures; the panel separately upheld dismissal of the plaintiffs' Equal Protection Clause claim.

2026-08-18 — Clayton County settled for $30,000; confirmed program ended [4]

On August 18, 2026, Clayton County settled the lawsuit, agreeing to pay $30,000 split between the two plaintiffs without admitting fault. The county confirmed the jet-bridge interdiction program had already been terminated with no intention to reactivate it, and agreed to require body-worn cameras and constitutional training for officers assigned to the airport; the settlement payment was authorized by the county's Board of Commissioners at its August 4, 2026 meeting.