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A federal judge in Texas rejected Boeing’s plea deal related to two deadly crashes tied to the 737 Max.
U.S. District judge Reed O’Connor said in a court filing Thursday that the plea deal limited the court’s ability to supervise an independent monitor by adding diversity considerations. Boeing and the Justice Department now have 30 days to decide next steps.
The rejection of the plea deal creates more uncertainty for Boeing as the plane maker has received a fresh wave of scrutiny from the government after a door plug on an Alaska Airlines Max 9 suddenly blew off.
Boeing agreed to accept a plea deal with the DOJ in July, pleading guilty to a charge related to misleading the Federal Aviation Administration on certain aspects of the 737 Max 8, the aircraft that was involved in two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people.
As part of the agreement, Boeing would have to install an independent compliance monitor to oversee its compliance and safety. The monitor would have been an outside aviation expert, and both Boeing and the federal government said the selection of the monitor would keep with their commitments to diversity and inclusion.
O’Connor said the federal government gave “shifting and contradictory explanations” on how the agreement’s diversity and inclusion provision would be applied to the deal.
“The Court is not convinced in light of the foregoing that the Government will not choose a monitor without race-based considerations and thus will not act in a nondiscriminatory manner,” O’Connor wrote. “In a case of this magnitude, it is in the utmost interest of justice that the public is confident this monitor selection is done based solely on competency.”
Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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