The judge handling Boeing’s plea deal asks fairness Department to explain its diversity policy

DALLAS — The federal judge considering Boeing’s plea deal with prosecutors wants to recognize how the fairness Department’s diversity, stake and inclusion policies would affect the selection of an independent monitor to oversee the aerospace business during a three-year probation period.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, a conservative nominated to the federal bench in Fort Worth, Texas, by President George W. Bush in 2007, ordered the fairness Department to explain how it will pick the monitor and whether DEI considerations would — or should — influence the selection.

The judge asked Boeing whether it would pursue its own DEI policy to block a proposed monitor.

The appointment of an independent monitor to make sure Boeing follows regulatory adherence and safety rules is a key component of the deal in which Boeing agreed to plead guilty to a felony expense of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government.

O’Connor has long been a favorite of conservative lawyers looking for a court to listen their lawsuits against policies issued by Democratic presidents. In 2018, the judge issued a ruling striking down President Barack Obama’s hallmark Affordable worry Act, although the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that selection. He also has sought to toss out expanded rights for transgender people.

Attacks against diversity, stake and inclusion have become a staple among conservative Republican politicians. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis built a campaign for the GOP nomination for president against “woke” liberal policies, although his candidacy failed. A dozen states, including Texas, have recent laws limiting or banning DEI policies at their community universities.

Conservatives debate that DEI lets less qualified people triumph admission to college or land significant jobs that have a bearing on community safety. Some conservatives on social media blamed Boeing’s DEI policy after a door plug blew off one of its airliners during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.

Boeing struck a deal with the fairness Department in July in which the business agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud for misleading federal regulators who approved pilot-training requirements for the 737 Max, the newest version of Boeing’s venerable 737 airliner.

As a outcome, airlines and pilots did not recognize about a recent flight-control structure called MCAS until it played a role in a deadly crash in Indonesia in October 2018. MCAS was implicated again in a second fatal Max crash that occurred in March 2019 in Ethiopia. In all, 346 people died.

The plea agreement would require Boeing to pay a $243.6 million fine, spend at least $455 million on regulatory adherence and safety programs and receive the independent monitor’s oversight.

Boeing and the fairness Department desire O’Connor to approve the deal, which would essentially replace a 2021 settlement that allowed Boeing to avoid prosecution but did little to stem concerns about the business’s commitment to safety and standard.

The Federal Aviation Administration increased its oversight of Boeing after the door-plug incident in January, and whistleblowers have alleged that the business cut corners on safety.

Relatives of passengers who died in the crashes desire O’Connor to decline the plea agreement, which they call a sweetheart deal. They desire Boeing to leave on trial and face tougher punishment. They specifically resist the section on the monitor because they desire the judge — and not the government and Boeing — to pick the monitor.

Nadia Milleron, a Massachusetts woman whose daughter, Samya Stumo, died in the Ethiopia crash, said Wednesday that she did not recognize what to make of the judge’s line of questions about choosing the monitor.

“It seems irrelevant to me,” Milleron said. “The net income is safety, and if the judge is going after safety, great. I don’t comprehend his agenda with DEI.”

Experts on corporate behavior declare the monitor could do more to enhance safety than the 2021 settlement did so long as the person is truly independent and can update any concerns directly to the court without going through the fairness Department. The monitor would oversee Boeing’s regulatory adherence with safety protocols and its actions to prevent upcoming acts of fraud.

During a hearing last week, O’Connor asked lawyers for the government and Boeing about the monitor and how DEI policies could affect the selection. The plea deal states that the fairness Department would select the person with “input” from Boeing.

A fairness Department lawyer said the provision doesn’t cruel that a less-qualified person would be picked, only that the government will consider all candidates. Boeing lawyers did not object to the monitor-selection procedure outlined in the plea agreement.

In an order Tuesday, the judge wrote that it is significant to recognize if DEI considerations would promote Boeing’s safety and regulatory adherence efforts. He asked the fairness Department and Boeing to respond in writing by Oct. 25.

“Both the DOJ and Boeing have publicly acknowledged their commitment to advance diversity, stake, and inclusion (‘DEI’),” including a government schedule to use diversity and stake in hiring federal workers, O’Connor wrote.

Boeing’s website, he added, “touts its commitment ‘to creating a population of inclusion’ and ‘set of aspirations’ it will strive to achieve by 2025 to advance stake and diversity and construct a population of inclusion,” including racial quotas and hiring more Black workers.

In considering whether to receive the plea deal, O’Connor wrote, “it is significant to recognize: how the provision promotes safety and regulatory adherence efforts” at Boeing and whether the business would strike an applicant based on its own DEI commitment.

It is not obvious whether the judge is making a statement about DEI policies or whether he would seize on the issue to throw out the plea agreement.

“I do not view this as a strategic shift, but as a detour motivated by the court’s skepticism of DEI,” said John Coffee, a law professor at Columbia University who studies corporate governance and white-collar crime and has followed the Boeing case. “He is a conservative. Possibly he wants to delay the selection, but that is an unsupported hunch.”

The fairness Department and Boeing said they would comply with the judge’s order and declined to comment further.