Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach called out the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) over passenger safety and employee competence.
During a Feb. 22 appearance on Fox Business’s The Big Money Show, Kobach said that the FAA is proudly "making passenger safety take back a seat to diversity” by prioritizing DEI initiatives. Kobach told Fox Business that he hopes the FAA “will change its hiring practice, go back to what it did before and that is hire, simply based on skill.”
Kobach went on to point out that ignoring merit is particularly dangerous for complex jobs: “I think all of us would probably agree, that whether it’s flying the plane, or the FAA air traffic control guiding the plane into the runway—or for that matter, a doctor performing a complicated surgery—we don't care what race the person is; we just want the most skilled person doing it because lives depend on it and the FAA seems to be turning away from that commonsense way of thinking.”
Kobach's remarks echoed previous concerns raised in his letter to FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker. Co-signed by 10 attorneys general, the letter linked the FAA's DEI hiring and training to recent safety lapses, demanding the federal agency focus on its core mission: safety.
“[T]he Biden FAA, under your administration, appears to prioritize virtue-signaling ‘diversity’ efforts over aviation expertise,” the attorneys general wrote, calling into question the FAA’s commitment to safety. “Under the Biden Administration, the FAA appears to no longer emphasize merit in its hiring decisions. Instead, you appear to be singlemindedly focused on hiring a ‘diverse’ workforce.”
The letter to the FAA also mentioned several discriminatory practices employed by the FAA to reach this goal, including a “biographical assessment.” Even more outrageously, the letter continued: “This includes circulating buzzwords to racial-affinity groups that would help minority candidates rise to the top.”
Next, the attorneys general provided an example of the FAA wasting its employees’ time with training pushing this noxious ideology, before suggesting that this ideology left the FAA unfocused, undermanned and incompetent. To make this point, the letter cited a 2023 FAA incident resulting in thousands of delays, as well as an astonishing rise in “near collisions” by planes in the air.
Kobach and the other signatories also noted that the FAA has acknowledged that there are “1,002 fewer fully certified air traffic controllers in August 2023 than in August 2012, despite increasing complexity of operations.” This statement, paired with the existence of qualified applicants rejected for these positions, is a scandal.
The attorney general letter lacerated the FAA, citing a moment when the agency acknowledged there were tradeoffs between diversity goals and job performance. “‘How much of a change in job performance is acceptable to achieve what diversity goals?’” the attorneys general rhetorically asked, before adding: “The answer should have been none. But unfortunately, under your leadership, the agency appears to be willing to sacrifice safety and job performance to meet race-based hiring targets.”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact ABC News (818) 460-7477, CBS News (212) 975-3247 and NBC News (212) 664-6192 and demand they report on the dangers of leftist DEI ideology infecting corporate America
