## Facts

- Julie Duncan, a nonsmoking Northwest Airlines flight attendant, worked on trans-Pacific flights where Northwest permitted onboard smoking on many routes to and from Asia.
- Duncan alleged she and other nonsmoking flight attendants suffered personal injuries from exposure to environmental tobacco smoke during those flights.
- She brought a putative class action under Washington state law seeking damages, injunctive relief, and medical monitoring, alleging Northwest breached a state-law duty to provide a safe and healthy workplace.
- Northwest later banned smoking on all trans-Pacific flights while the appeal was pending.

## Issues

1. Whether the Airline Deregulation Act’s preemption clause (barring state enforcement of laws “relating to the rates, routes, or service” of an air carrier) preempts state-law workplace-safety tort claims by flight attendants based on injuries from secondhand smoke resulting from an airline’s inflight smoking policy.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s dismissal and remanded.
- The court held the flight attendants’ state-law personal-injury claims were not preempted by the Airline Deregulation Act.
- Relying on controlling circuit authority defining “service” narrowly, the court concluded the claims did not sufficiently relate to “rates, routes, or service” within the meaning of the preemption clause.

## Legal Principles

- Under Ninth Circuit law, “service” in the ADA preemption clause refers to the economic and operational elements of point-to-point air transportation (e.g., prices, schedules, origins, and destinations), not broadly to inflight conditions or amenities.
- State tort claims seeking recovery for physical injury based on an airline’s alleged failure to provide a safe workplace are generally outside ADA preemption when their connection to deregulated economic “service” is remote.
- Although “relating to” is broad language, it is not read to eliminate traditional state personal-injury remedies absent a close connection to the ADA’s protected sphere of rates, routes, or economically defined services.

## Conclusion

The court held that flight attendants’ state-law claims for injuries from secondhand smoke on smoking-permitted international flights were not preempted by the Airline Deregulation Act because the suit targeted workplace safety and personal injury, not the economic “rates, routes, or service” of air transportation as defined in the circuit’s controlling precedent.


Duncan v. Nw. Airlines, Inc., 208 F.3d 1112 (9th Cir. 2000)