The United States' Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is investigating two airports over complaints of religious discrimination after Chick-fil-A was banned from their premises over its take on same-sex marriage.
"The Department of Transportation has received complaints alleging discrimination by two airport operators against a private company due to the expression of the owner's religious beliefs,' the FAA said in a statement.
The FFA is now working to determine whether the international airports of San Antonio and Buffalo Niagara had discriminated against the Christian-leaning franchise.
"The FAA notes that federal requirements prohibit airport operators from excluding persons on the basis of religious creed from participating in airport activities that receive or benefit from FAA grant funding," the FAA added.
In March, the San Antonio City Council disinvited the fast-food chain, which was founded by devout Southern Baptists in 1946, from doing business in the city's airport. Days later, the Buffalo Niagara International Airport said the franchise wasn't coming there either, despite earlier plans to add a Chick-fil-A outlet.
The rationale behind these moves was to punish the Georgia-based franchise for the donations of its late founder S. Truett Cathy as well as his son and current CEO, Dan Cathy, to Christian groups opposing same-sex marriage.
In 2012, Dan Cathy said that he was supporting the "biblical definition of the family unit", which sees marriage as a union of a man and a woman.
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It emerged in March that he had actually put his words into action: the company was revealed to have donated $1.8 million (over a fifth of its overall donations to non-profits) in 2017 to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, the Paul Anderson Youth Home, and the Salvation Army − the religious groups that are allegedly spreading an anti-LGBTQ message.
The company denied the accusations, saying that "to suggest that our effort in supporting these organisations was focused on suppressing a group of people is misleading and inaccurate."
