Bay Area woman accused of assault on SFO flight

According to the indictment released Thursday, 40-year-old Reshma Kamath was aboard Air India Flight 173 headed to San Francisco International Airport in late June when the altercation occurred. Kamath is accused of verbally abusing, threatening, and assaulting two crew members during the flight.

After exiting the plane, Kamath is accused of attacking an SFO security guard and a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer who attempted to arrest her.

Kamath, from the Contra Costa County community of Bethel Island, did not respond to phone calls and emails seeking comment on Friday.

The accused woman appears to be a controversial Bay Area lawyer who was reprimanded by the California State Bar in May for using inflammatory or racist language against white judges and court staff and accused of continuing to practice law despite being expelled from federal courts in August 2024. According to the State Bar's website, she has been ineligible to practice law in California since November 8.

In June, the state bar accused Kamath, a civil litigation attorney in San Mateo County, of filing several court documents filled with profane and derogatory comments toward court employees.

In one document, the bar said, she described a white federal judge as “racist” and added that the judge and other white lawyers and judges “are used to their WHITE ASSES GETTING LICKED BY NON-WHITES — i.e., non-white staff, non-white judges, and non-white attorneys — BUT NOT ME.”

In another document, the bar accused Kamath of writing, in all capital letters, that she “cannot believe how dumb the court is getting maybe just believing the s— hit that clerks write, and/or maybe the court is just racist when they see a white attorney and want to preserve what courts perceve as white people’s law in America that is slipping away each day.”

After being muted for yelling and interrupting the judge during a hearing conducted remotely, Kamath posted a response that called the judge a “dirty white racist whore bitch,” the bar said.

Kamath, who graduated from Northwestern University law school and has been practicing law since 2021, described the state bar accusations as “just a bunch of trashy Whites offended when their racism and misogyny was called out.”