A US judge on Thursday rejected Boeing’s agreement to plead guilty to fraud charges following two 737 MAX crashes, faulting the diversity and inclusion clause in the deal.
Boeing did not immediately comment. A spokesman for the US Department of Justice, which brokered the plea deal with Boeing, said it was reviewing the opinion. Options for Boeing and the Justice Department could include appealing the judge’s rejection of the plea deal or submitting a renegotiated agreement for court approval.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth, Texas, who has a record of ruling in favor of conservative cases, seized on one sentence in the plea agreement that referred to the Justice Department’s diversity policy regarding selecting an independent monitor to audit the planemaker. Compliance practices. He had asked Boeing and prosecutors to brief him on the matter in October.
O’Connor ruled that Boeing and the Justice Department now have 30 days to brief the court on how they plan to proceed with the case.
Judges who consider plea deals typically do not upend them on issues not disputed by the parties to the agreement. In the rare cases they do happen, it’s usually because the judge wants to impose a different sentence than what prosecutors agreed to.
The plea deal also “marginalises” the judge in selecting and supervising the independent monitor, and prevents the imposition of a probation condition that would require Boeing to comply with the monitor’s anti-fraud recommendations, O’Connor said in his decision. He said the agreement was “not in the public interest.”
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Relatives of victims of the 737 MAX crashes, which occurred in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people, described the plea agreement as a “sweetheart” deal that failed to adequately hold Boeing accountable for the deaths of their loved ones.
The two plane crashes occurred in Indonesia and Ethiopia over a period of five months. The families briefly referenced the Justice Department’s diversity and inclusion policy in court filings opposing the plea agreement, but did not detail concerns about it.
“Judge O’Connor’s categorical rejection of the plea deal is an important victory” for the victims’ families, said Paul Cassel, the attorney representing them.
“Judge O’Connor recognized that this was a convenient deal between the government and Boeing that failed to focus on key concerns: holding Boeing accountable for its deadly crime and ensuring that nothing like this happens again in the future,” Cassell said.
Cassell said he hoped the decision would lead to a renegotiation of the agreement to specifically address passengers and crew who died in plane crashes.
An accepted plea deal would have branded Boeing a convicted felon for conspiring to defraud the US Federal Aviation Administration over problematic software affecting the flight control systems of the planes that crashed.
Boeing agreed to pay a fine of up to $487.2 million and spend $455 million to improve safety and compliance practices over three years of court-supervised monitoring as part of the deal.
Relatives of the victims want to charge Boeing and its executives with crimes that hold them responsible for the deaths of their loved ones and present any evidence of wrongdoing in a public trial. They also argued that Boeing should pay up to $24.78 billion in connection with the accidents.
In May, the Justice Department found that Boeing violated terms of a 2021 agreement that protected it from prosecution over crashes. Prosecutors then decided to bring criminal charges against Boeing and negotiated the current plea deal.
The decision came in the wake of an in-flight door panel exploding Jan. 5 on an Alaska Airlines plane, which exposed ongoing safety and quality issues at Boeing.
The judge’s objections largely focused on the government’s diversity and inclusion policy covering the selection of an independent monitor to oversee Boeing for three years.
These policies are commonly known as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or DEI. DEI policies have become a flashpoint in America’s culture wars, which refer to conflicts between liberal and conservative values.
Supporters assert that these policies combat unconscious bias, inequality and discrimination in hiring while opponents say they focus on characteristics such as race and gender at the expense of basic job qualifications.
“The plea agreement requires the parties to take race into account when appointing an independent monitor,” O’Connor wrote in his decision. “In a case of this magnitude, it is in the highest interest of justice for the public to be confident that screen selection is being made on the basis of merit alone.”
O’Connor, who was appointed to the federal court in 2007 by then-Republican President George W. Bush, gained prominence in rulings that favored conservative litigants challenging government policies, including ruling Obamacare unconstitutional in a decision that was overturned by the Supreme Court American later.
He also previously nullified the Biden administration’s attempt to deter schools from discriminating against students based on gender identity or sexual orientation.
