Lawsuit Alleges Racial Discrimination by FAA in Air Traffic Controller Hiring

30.04.2024 - 18:47 / travelpulse.com / Laurie Baratti

A new class-action lawsuit has been filed against the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), representing over 1,000 qualified air traffic controller applicants who were allegedly discriminated against based solely on their race.

Former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who is currently co-counsel for Colorado-based Mountain States Legal Foundation, is leading the lawsuit efforts in this case. If it succeeds, the suit could set a new precedent in forcing companies and government agencies to hire staff based on merit, rather than to fulfill diversity quotas.

Laxalt told Fox Business that his firm has found a substantial number of documents that reveal how the Obama-era FAA practiced discrimination in its hiring processes, rejecting roughly 1,000 people who had trained to become air traffic controllers and passed the standard test before they were disqualified and their tests thrown out for being “too White”. 

The FAA then created a new test that included a biographical section, which was supposed to help add more African Americans into the air traffic applicant pool. These changes came about because the FAA had been directed by the federal government to diversify an overwhelmingly white workforce in this area. 

The biographical questionnaire is supposed to have asked many irrelevant questions, such as the test-taker’s worst college subject and how many sports they played in high school, awarding extra points for certain attributes that were unrelated to their status as qualified air traffic controllers.

"Nevermind how insulting it was that the government was concluding that this is a way to pool up African Americans into the air traffic control ranks, but that’s all there," Laxalt said. "They did change the test to change the applicant pool."

Up to that point, during the 20 years before the Obama-era FAA, the Collegiate Training Initiative (CTI) program graduated 100 percent of those who went on to work in their field. However, the aforementioned changes to the hiring process meant that many of these graduates began to be passed over in favor of applicants who had only graduated high school.

"That’s the group of citizens we represent. Their careers were derailed. Their lives were upended,” said Laxalt. “So, it’s important we get justice for them, but obviously, it’s important that cases like this highlight that these practices were going on in the federal government, and they can still be going on in any agency in America."

The lawsuit is based on Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which makes it illegal to discriminate against any person on the basis of race or gender amid the hiring process.

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