A federal judge in Texas has set a June trial date for the U.S. government's years-old conspiracy case against Boeing for misleading regulators about the 737 Max jetliner before two of the planes crashed, killing 346 people.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor did not explain in the scheduling order he issued on Tuesday why he decided to set the case for trial. Lawyers for the aerospace company and the Justice Department have spent months trying to renegotiate a July 2024 plea agreement that called for Boeing to plead guilty to a single felony charge.
The judge rejected that deal in December, saying that diversity, inclusion and equity policies the Justice Department had in place at the time might influence the selection of a monitor to oversee the company’s compliance with the terms of its proposed sentence.
Since then, O'Connor had three times extended the deadline for the two sides to report how they planned to proceed. His most recent extension, granted earlier this month, gave them until April 11 to “confer on a potential resolution of this case short of trial.”
The judge revoked the remaining time with his Tuesday order, which laid out a timeline for proceedings leading up to a June 23 trial in Fort Worth.
The Department of Justice declined to comment on the judge's action. A Boeing statement shed no light on the status of the negotiations.
“As stated in the parties’ recent filings, Boeing and the Department of Justice continue to be engaged in good faith discussions regarding an appropriate resolution of this matter,” the company said.
The deal the judge refused to approve would have averted a criminal trial by allowing Boeing to plead guilty to conspiring to defraud Federal Aviation Administration regulators who approved minimal pilot-training requirements for the 737 Max nearly a decade ago. More intensive training in flight simulators would have increased the cost for airlines to operate the then-new plane model.
The development and certification of what has become Boeing’s bestselling airliner became an intense focus of safety investigators after two of Max planes crashed less than five months apart in 2018 and 2019. Many relatives of passengers who died off the coast of Indonesia and in Ethiopia have pushed for the prosecution of former Boeing officials, a public criminal trial and more severe financial punishment for the company.
In response to criticism of last year’s plea deal from victims’ families, prosecutors said they did not have evidence to argue that Boeing’s deception played a role in the crashes. Prosecutors told O'Connor the conspiracy to commit fraud charge was the toughest they could prove against Boeing.
O'Connor did not object in his December ruling against the plea agreement to the sentence Boeing would have faced: a fine of up to $487.2 million with credit given for $243.6 million in previously paid penalties; a requirement to invest $455 million in compliance and safety programs; and outside oversight during three years of probation.
Instead, the judge focused his negative assessment on the process for selecting an outsider to keep an eye on Boeing’s actions to prevent fraud. He expressed particular concern that the agreement “requires the parties to consider race when hiring the independent monitor … ‘in keeping with the (Justice) Department’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.’”
“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. The parties’ DEI efforts only serve to undermine this confidence in the government and Boeing’s ethics and anti-fraud efforts,” O’Connor wrote.
An executive order President Donald Trump signed during the first week of his second term sought to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the federal government. Trump's move may render the judge’s concerns moot, depending on the outcome of legal challenges to his order.
Trump's return to office also means the Justice Department's leadership has changed since federal prosecutors decided last year to pursue the case against Boeing.
Boeing agreed to the plea deal only after the Justice Department determined last year that the company violated a 2021 agreement that had protected it against criminal prosecution on the same fraud-conspiracy charge.
Government officials started reexamining the case after a door plug panel blew off an Alaska Airlines 737 Max during flight in January 2024. That incident renewed concerns about manufacturing quality and safety at Boeing, and put the company under intense scrutiny by regulators and lawmakers.
Boeing lawyers said last year that if the plea deal were rejected, the company would challenge the Justice Department's finding that it breached the deferred-prosecution agreement. O’Connor helped Boeing’s position by writing in his December decision that it was not clear what the company did to violate the 2021 deal.
FILE - The Boeing logo is displayed at the company's factory, Sept. 24, 2024, in Renton, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson, File)
