Judge Rejects Boeing's Plea Deal Connected To Deadly 737 MAX Crashes

A federal judge in Texas rejected a deal between Boeing and the U.S. government that would have allowed the aerospace company to plead guilty to a felony conspiracy charge and pay a fine for misleading the Federal Aviation Administrator about two fatal 737 Max jetliner crashes, according to a report.

In July Boeing agreed to plead to a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. charge and up to $487 million in fines—far less than the $24.8 billion the families of the crashes sought, CNN reported.

U.S. District Court Judge Reed O'Connor balked at the process to select an independent monitor that the deal required to oversee safety and quality improvement at Boeing.

He said that diversity, inclusion and equity policies at the Justice Department and at Boeing could play a factor in picking the monitor.

"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," he wrote in the opinion.

"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," he said.

He gave both sides 30 days to respond to him about how they would like to proceed.