HR business partner sided with manager at every juncture, complaint alleges
A former United Airlines project manager says the airline turned on him the day after it celebrated his Arab Palestinian heritage in an internal article - and that HR backed his manager every step of the way until he was fired.
Mohanad Alhams filed suit in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on May 25, 2026, accusing United of discrimination and retaliation under Title VII and 42 U.S.C. § 1981, the federal law protecting the right to make and enforce employment contracts free from racial bias.
Alhams worked at United for more than five years, starting as an engineer in January 2019 and moving to a project manager role in March 2022. The complaint says he had no formal discipline during that time. Then, on April 11, 2024, during Arab American Heritage Month, United published an article on its employee platform, Flying Together, featuring him and his background. The next day, April 12, his new manager Tara Lu escalated her first complaint against him - over a months-old, never-realized plan to visit a station in Venice, Italy, raised in a casual conversation at a bowling alley before she was even his boss.
From that point on, Alhams alleges, the goalposts moved. He says he was singled out for typos his colleagues also made, flagged for starting project check-ins 116 days out when the team standard was 90, and disciplined for missing a meeting while on approved vacation, while...
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