A federal judge rejected aerospace company Boeing’s guilty plea deal in connection to multiple fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes in part because of the deal’s diversity, equity, and inclusion provision that would have subjected an independent monitor of Boeing’s operations to DEI requirements.

Boeing entered a plea deal with the government in July following a Department of Justice investigation into two fatal wrecks that claimed the lives of 346 individuals. Negotiated in the terms of the deal was an up to $487 million fine and an agreement that would require a DOJ-selected independent monitor to oversee Boeing’s safety procedures for at least three years.

The DOJ said in the deal that it would honor its “commitment to diversity and inclusion” when selecting a monitor, a provision about which U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor asked to be briefed by the agency and Boeing in October. In his Wednesday ruling, Judge O’Connor cited concerns with a 2021 Biden administration order that would seemingly “encourage consideration of race in hiring” at federal agencies.

“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,” O’Connor wrote.

The agreement is “not in the public interest,” the judge added, echoing criticisms made by relatives of the victims killed in the two plane crashes.

“Judge O’Connor’s emphatic rejection of the plea deal is an important victory,” Paul Cassell, a lawyer for some of the victims’ families, said in response to the ruling. “Judge O’Connor has recognized that this was a cozy deal between [the DOJ and Boeing] that failed to focus on the overriding concerns: holding Boeing accountable for its deadly crime and ensuring that nothing like this happens again in the future.”

Aviation giant Boeing “knowingly and willfully” conspired to defraud the U.S. by concealing pertinent information about the 737 MAX’s software systems, according to DOJ prosecutors. The two fatal crashes, a 2018 Lion Air flight and a 2019 Ethiopian Airlines flight, “exposed fraudulent and deceptive conduct by employees of one of the world’s leading commercial airplane manufacturers,” then-acting assistant attorney general David P. Burns of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said in 2021.

“This sweetheart deal fails to recognize that, because of Boeing’s conspiracy, 346 people died. Through crafty lawyering between Boeing and DOJ, the deadly consequences of Boeing’s crime are being hidden,” Cassell said in July.