By David Shepardson and Mike Spector
(Reuters) – A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Boeing and the U.S. Justice Department to detail the impact of diversity and inclusion policies on the selection of an independent monitor before he decides whether to accept the planemaker’s plea deal.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor held a hearing Friday as he considers whether to approve Boeing’s agreement to plead guilty to conspiring to defraud regulators. The deal would include oversight for three years by an independent monitor.
The order is the latest hurdle Boeing faces to avoid a potentially embarrassing trial and plead guilty to misleading the Federal Aviation Administration and violating a 2021 deferred prosecution agreement.
O’Connor on Tuesday told DOJ and Boeing to answer questions by Oct. 25 about the DOJ policy of selecting a monitor in keeping with the government’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.
A DOJ spokesperson said the government “will comply with the judge’s order and respond before the court’s deadline.” Boeing did not immediately comment.
While ordering DOJ and Boeing to respond to a series of questions about the diversity and inclusion policy and how it might affect the selection of an independent monitor, he also pointed out that it was not a disputed facet of the plea agreement.
“Critically, Boeing did not voice any objection to this provision,” the judge said in his order.
O’Connor also wants the planemaker to detail how its existing diversity, equity and inclusion policies “are used in its current compliance and ethics efforts.”
The planemaker agreed to pay up to a $487.2 million fine and spend at least $455 million on improving safety and compliance practices over three years of court-supervised probation as part of the plea deal.
O’Connor Friday pressed the Justice Department to justify the terms of Boeing’s agreement to plead guilty to fraud in the wake of the two fatal 737 MAX crashes in Indonesia in 2018 and Ethiopia in 2019 that killed 346 people.
Attorneys for Boeing and DOJ argued Judge O’Connor should accept the plea deal, while lawyers for relatives of the crash victims urged him to reject it. Boeing agreed in July to plead guilty to conspiring to defraud regulators.
(Reporting by David Shepardson, Mike Spector and Sheila Dang; Editing by Stephen Coates)
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