A US appeals court upheld a Trump-era Justice Department deal allowing Boeing to avoid prosecution over the 737 MAX crashes, rejecting victims’ families’ appeal. The ruling limits victims’ rights to challenge federal agreements and leaves Boeing without a criminal conviction for the deaths of 346 people.
The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, sitting in New Orleans, ruled on March 31, 2026, that families of victims from the two Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashes cannot use the Crime Victims’ Rights Act to undo the Justice Department’s 2025 non-prosecution deal with Boeing or to revive the dismissed criminal case. In a 10-page per curiam opinion, the panel said the Justice Department did not violate the families’ CVRA rights in the 2025 process and that the appeals court lacked jurisdiction under that statute to second-guess the district court’s decision to let prosecutors dismiss the case.
B737 Trial Background
This case traces back to Lion Air Flight 610 in October 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March 2019, which killed 346 people. Federal prosecutors later alleged that Boeing employees misled the FAA about changes to MCAS, the flight-control system involved in the crashes. In January 2021, DOJ charged Boeing with conspiracy to defraud the United States and simultaneously entered a deferred prosecution agreement, under which Boeing admitted responsibility for the conduct charged and agreed to pay more than $2.5 billion in penalties, compensation, and victim-beneficiary funding.
That 2021 deal became the center of a long fight over victims’ rights. In 2023, Judge Reed O’Connor held that the crash families were “crime victims” under the CVRA and that DOJ had violated their right to confer before reaching the 2021 agreement, although he said the violation came from legal error rather than bad faith. The Fifth Circuit later said victims’ rights still had to be respected in later proceedings, but it also signaled limits on courts’ power to rewrite deferred prosecution agreements.
B737 Max: How the case developed
The posture changed again in May 2024, when DOJ told the district court that Boeing had breached the 2021 deferred prosecution agreement by failing to design, implement, and enforce an adequate anti-fraud compliance and ethics program. After that, Boeing initially agreed in July 2024 to plead guilty to fraud conspiracy in a deal that would have made it a convicted felon and subjected it to an independent monitor. But Judge O’Connor rejected that plea deal in December 2024, failing a diversity-related monitor-selection provision.
After Donald Trump returned to office on January 20, 2025, the DOJ changed course. By May 2025, the department reached a new agreement in principle that allowed Boeing to avoid prosecution under a non-prosecution agreement rather than a guilty plea. That new deal required Boeing to pay more than $1.1 billion in total, including a $243.6 million fine, an additional $444.5 million for victims’ families, and more than $455 million for compliance, safety, and quality improvements; it also dropped the independent monitor requirement in favor of a compliance consultant. Judge O’Connor approved the dismissal in November 2025 while sharply criticizing the outcome as lacking accountability and independent oversight.
What this Boeing judgment is doing
Legally, the Fifth Circuit did three main things. First, it said the families’ attack on the 2021 deferred prosecution agreement was now moot Because Boeing’s breach ended that agreement’s binding force. Second, it held that DOJ’s May 2025 video call with the families satisfied the CVRA’s requirement that victims have a “reasonable right to confer,” and that the record did not show prosecutors misled them about the timing or effect of the 2025 non-prosecution agreement. Third, it held that the CVRA gives victims a path to enforce the rights listed in that statute, but does not give them an unlimited right to appeal the substance of a prosecutor’s decision to dismiss a criminal case under Rule 48(a).
Put more simply: the court is saying, “the families had a right to be consulted, not a right to control the prosecution.” The panel accepted that victims can enforce consultation and fairness rights under the CVRA, but it would not let those rights expand into a general power for victims to force a prosecution to continue.
What this judgment is not doing for the victims and Boeing
This ruling does not say Boeing was innocent. The opinion repeatedly starts from the fact that DOJ charged Boeing with conspiracy to defraud the United States and that Boeing had admitted responsibility for the charged conduct in the 2021 deferred prosecution agreement. Nor does the ruling bless the non-prosecution agreement as wise policy or in the public interest; the Fifth Circuit said it lacked CVRA jurisdiction to conduct that kind of substantive review of the dismissal itself. And it does not erase Judge O’Connor’s earlier finding that DOJ violated victims’ rights in the run-up to the 2021 deal.
So the practical result is narrower than it may sound: the court did not endorse Boeing’s conduct, and it did not hold that the families’ treatment in 2020-21 was proper. It held that those earlier issues no longer supplied a remedy here, and that the 2025 consultation was legally sufficient under the CVRA.
Why the court ruled this way for Boeing
The opinion is driven by a fairly conservative view of judicial power in criminal cases. The judges treated prosecution agreements as contracts, leaned hard on mootness once the 2021 deal was breached, and emphasized the traditional rule that private citizens generally do not have a judicially cognizable interest in forcing someone else’s prosecution. In other words, the panel saw the case less than “how should Boeing be punished?” and more than “what exactly does the CVRA authorize a court to do?” Its answer was: not much beyond protecting the specific statutory rights Congress listed.
Was this influenced by the Trump administration?
On the underlying outcomeyes, there is a strong basis for saying the Trump administration matters. Under the Biden administration, DOJ concluded Boeing breached the 2021 deal and moved toward a guilty plea with an independent monitor. After Trump took office, DOJ reversed course and negotiated the May 2025 non-prosecution agreement that let Boeing avoid a conviction. Reuters explicitly described that shift as DOJ reversing course after Trump returned to office.
On the judicial ruling itselfthe evidence is weaker. The Fifth Circuit opinion does not invoke Trump or politics; it rests on jurisdiction, mootness, and the scope of victims’ rights under the CVRA. That said, two of the three judges on the panel, Stuart Kyle Duncan and Kurt Engelhardt, were appointed by Trump, while Leslie Southwick was appointed by George W. Bush. Judicial appointments can shape legal philosophy, but it would be speculation to say this particular opinion was politically directed by the Trump administration rather than grounded in the panel’s reading of the statute and precedent.
My bottom line is this: the administration clearly influenced the prosecutorial deal that set up this result; it is much harder to prove that it influenced the appellate court’s legal reasoning beyond the ordinary effect of who sits on the bench.
Why this matters beyond Boeing
The broader significance is that the rulings narrows the practical force of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act in high-profile corporate cases. Victims may have a right to consultation, notice, and fairness, but this decision suggests they still may have very limited power to derail a prosecutor’s settlement decision once DOJ decides dismissal is the path it wants. That is why the families’ lawyers are framing the case as bigger than Boeing: it is about whether victims can meaningfully shape corporate criminal resolutions, or only object to them after the fact
