Exclusive: The woman says she was unable to take her daughter to at least two rodeo events, which kept her from making the nationals. A Florida mom is suing a company that vets guests for Airbnb after she says she was banned from the short-term rental platform over a pair of past felony convictions that have since been expunged. The mistake, which the lawsuit argues never should have happened, left the woman unable to take her daughter to a series of potentially lucrative rodeo competitions, and prevented the girl — whose winnings provide the family’s main source of income — from qualifying for the barrel racing national championships.
![[Jane Doe's felony record was expunged more than two years ago, but was still included in her Airbnb background report, according to a federal lawsuit]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/29/21/10/GettyImages-1222218911.jpeg)
As a result, she was forced to give up a chance at “more publicity and other economic opportunities,” while her mother, who is Black and identified in court filings as “Jane Doe,” remains unable to access her Airbnb account over offenses that are no longer on her record. “Moreover, [Doe’s] daughter is trying to set the standard for other people of color to join barrel racing,” according to the complaint. “[Doe’s] daughter was very upset that she missed out on her opportunity to showcase her skills at Nationals, which devastated [Doe].”.
![[Barrel racing is a fast-paced women-only sport in which winners and losers are often separated by a fraction of a second]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/29/21/33/GettyImages-544833988.jpeg)
Attorney David Pinkhasov, who is representing Doe, told The Independent, “A lot of times, these [background check] companies rely on data vendors to obtain information, without doing any manual review of what they receive.”. Fully automated data mining, often with the assistance of AI, can result in a truly surreal set of issues, according to co-counsel Moshe Boroosan. He described one case involving a client who was mixed up with the leader of a neo-Nazi prison gang because the two shared a similar name, another client who found himself confused with a convicted murderer who was born on the exact same date, and a third whose identity had been conflated with a large-scale fentanyl trafficker over a set of comparable personal identifiers.
![[Jane Doe was ultimately forced to book her family into hotels and RV parks, which were more expensive and less convenient than the Airbnbs she had hoped for, according to her lawsuit]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/29/21/56/GettyImages-1208730763.jpeg)
“We see so many of these cases, unfortunately,” Boroosan told The Independent. Doe’s ordeal began on December 23, 2024, when she attempted to book accommodations through Airbnb for herself, her husband, and their daughter, along with her two other siblings, according to a complaint filed Monday in Ft. Myers federal court. It says the five were planning to travel across the country for barrel racing competitions, and “looked forward to the additional space, comfort, and amenities of the properties” listed on Airbnb.
Barrel racing is a women-only event that involves entering the ring astride a horse galloping at full speed, then maneuvering around three barrels set up in a cloverleaf pattern, as quickly as possible, with winners and losers often separated by fractions of seconds. To book a stay, the Airbnb site required Doe to authorize a background check, which she gladly did “as there was nothing on her record of concern,” the complaint states. But, it goes on, Doe soon received an email from Airbnb, saying her reservation had been canceled and her account removed, due to her criminal history. In a panic, the complaint says Doe requested a copy of the report in question, and was “shocked and humiliated” to find her two expunged felonies, the details of which are not in the complaint, had been included.
Doe had used Airbnb before, without a problem, Boroosan said, explaining that credit card issuers, employers, landlords, and companies like Airbnb run checks on customers, staffers, tenants, and renters every so often in order to make sure their intel stays current. This time, for whatever reason, Doe’s account happened to be flagged. It is unclear why her convictions remained in Inflection’s files.
Doe checked public court records to confirm the expungements hadn’t somehow been undone, then Doe immediately contacted Airbnb to appeal the decision. She informed the company that her convictions had been cleared more than two years earlier, and never should have been reported, the complaint continues. Still, Airbnb refused to budge, according to the complaint. Booking the family into hotels and RV parks became the only option for Doe, which were often either unaffordable or too small for everyone to fit, the complaint states. Ultimately, it says, Doe was unable to bring her daughter to two of her barrel race competitions, which kept her from making the nationals.
The public court record “was widely available,” and “even a cursory review” of it by Inflection Risk Solutions would have spared Doe “the humiliation, embarrassment, and stress” of the resulting situation, the complaint states. “An appropriate quality control review of [Does] report would have made clear that [Inflection] was reporting an expunged record and thereby defeating the very purpose of expungement,” the complaint alleges.