Selma Blair faces assault charges after her second Delta flight incident — and medication is blamed again

Selma Blair was arraigned in Queens on Monday 12 October 2026 on two counts of second-degree assault, a day after a Delta flight from Los Angeles landed at JFK with police waiting for her. The 54-year-old star of Cruel Intentions and Legally Blonde was released on $20,000 cash bail, the judge issued an order of protection for a nurse, and she is due back in court on 19 January 2027.

What happened in the air comes mostly from TMZ, which broke the story. Blair allegedly tried to open the aircraft door mid-flight, punched one flight attendant and bit another, and was restrained on board until landing. Port Authority officials confirmed two flight attendants were injured and one went to hospital to be checked over. Delta, without naming her, said it has "zero tolerance" for that sort of behaviour.

What the charges actually cover

Here is the odd part: according to prosecutors, the Queens case has nothing to do with the plane.

• The officer: Blair allegedly kicked a Port Authority police officer while she was being strapped to a stretcher and taken to an ambulance.
• The nurse: at Jamaica Hospital, a nurse says Blair kicked her in the chest, causing substantial pain.
• The flight itself: the FBI reportedly issued a federal summons for assault "within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States". That case is expected in Brooklyn, with no date set.

Her representative's line came first: "Selma experienced a medical emergency that led to the alleged conduct. Upon landing, she received immediate medical attention and is currently in stable condition." In court, her lawyer Shawn Barnes filled in the rest. Blair had come off long hours on set, missed several doses of the medication she takes for multiple sclerosis, then fell and hit her head on the plane.

"These factors, coupled with the altitude, resulted in a state of severe confusion and disorientation. This was not an intentional assault."

— Shawn Barnes, Selma Blair's lawyer, in court

Blair went public with her MS diagnosis in 2018 and has since become one of Hollywood's most visible disability campaigners. Nobody serious doubts the illness. The awkward bit is the precedent.

The Delta flight in 2016

In June 2016, Blair was flying Delta from Cancún to Los Angeles in first class with her young son. Witnesses said she had been drinking wine and started shouting, and she was carried off at LAX on a stretcher and taken to hospital. Nobody pressed charges. Her statement to Vanity Fair at the time: "I mixed alcohol with medication, and that caused me to black out and led me to say and do things that I deeply regret." Months later, on The Talk, she described a glass of wine, a pill she had mistaken for another, and "a total psychotic blackout". She has since called it a one-off.

Two Delta flights, ten years apart, and both times the explanation on the way out was medication.

Reddit has noticed too. The top reply in the r/entertainment thread is short: "Welcome to the No Fly List", with more than 2,700 upvotes. Further down, the more pointed question: what would a less famous passenger have waiting for them on landing?

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To be fair, both things can be true at once. A neurological condition can explain confusion at altitude, and the prosecutors in Queens still have a nurse with a protection order and an officer with a kick to report. In 2016, the medical explanation closed the story. This time it opens two court cases, one state and one federal.

Last time she left the plane on a stretcher. This time she left it with a case number.

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