JetBlue Airways hired 54-year-old Diane Gorzynski as a customer service agent in January 2000. About two years later, the company hired James Celeste as her supervisor at the Buffalo International Airport. Celeste allegedly subjected Gorzynski to repeated and multiple forms of sexual harassment and age discrimination until she was fired in July 2002.

Gorzynski alleges that Celeste announced to a full plane that she used to be a table dancer, and that he grabbed her and other female employees around the waist and tried to tickle them.