TracingWoodgrains Profile picture
Jan 29 8 tweets 10 min read Read on X
A scandal at the FAA has been moving on a slow-burn through the courts for a decade, culminating in the class-action lawsuit currently known as Brigida v. @SecretaryPete, brought by a class who spent years and thousands of dollars in coursework to become air traffic controllers, only to be dismissed by a pass-fail biographical questionnaire with a >90% fail rate, implemented without warning after many of them had already taken, and passed, a skill assessment. The questionnaire awarded points for factors like "lowest grade in high school is science," something explicitly admitted by the FAA in a motion to deny class certification.

Mainstream outlets have given it sparse coverage, for reasons that will become clear shortly. Right-wing sources paid attention initially, but few ran follow-ups or took a close look at the court filings. So: What exactly is going on? How did all of this happen?

I am not a professional. I am a law student with a part-time job on @TheBARPod, a podcast about internet nonsense, and a side hobby of sticking my nose where it doesn't belong. I wanted, and want, to do a thorough report on this when I get the time. But the story is big enough, and spreading fast enough, that I want to make sure that people have access to accurate info as quickly as possible.

First, though: court filings are public records, but they are often expensive and difficult to obtain. Tools like RECAP help, but I was lucky to have people around me willing to pay the $80 in PACER fees for a few of the documents. This story is much larger than me and I do not want people to have to rely on me for it. Here are the court documents I have: Most of the interesting exhibits are in 139. Please look for yourself if this story catches your interest.

With that out of the way, my current understanding of the situation is as follows. It will be dry at times; others can editorialize more:

Historically, the pipeline into air traffic control has followed a few paths: military veterans, graduates of the "Air Traffic-Collegiate Training Initiative" (AT-CTI) program, and the general public. Whichever route they came from, each candidate would be required to take and pass the eight-hour AT-SAT cognitive test to begin serious training. This test was validated as being effective as recently as 2013.

The FAA has faced pressure to diversify the air traffic control for generations, something that seems to have influenced even the scoring structure of the AT-SAT cognitive test used for pre-employment screening of air traffic control candidates. Leading up to 2014, that pressure intensified, with the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (NBCFAE) leading the push.

To start with, in 2000, a three-member task force, including NBCFAE member Mamie Mallory, wrote "A Business Case and Strategic Plan to Address Under-Representation of Minorities, Women, and People with Targeted Disabilities," recommending, per the lawsuit, a workplace cultural audit, diversity "hiring targets" for each year, and "allowing RNO- [Race and National Origin] and gender-conscious hiring." They were advised by Dr. Herbert Wong, who helped the NBCFAE analyze FAA diversity data in 2009. Wong authored a report concluding that the FAA was "the least diverse agency within the executive branch of the federal government." Mallory and Wong were consulted as part of the 2014 test replacement process.

From there, the NBCFAE sent letters in July and October 2009 to the FAA administrator and the Secretary for the Department of Transportation claiming disparate treatment, adopted a strategic plan "advocating for affirmative employment, obtaining an 'independent valuation of hiring and/or screening tools,' and pursuing litigation," a "Talking Points" document pushing the FAA to address diversity, and the creation of a group called "Team 7."

In 2012, Team 7 members met with the secretary of the Department of Transportation, the FAA administrator, and senior FAA leaders to discuss diversity, after which the FAA commissioned a "Barrier Analysis" with a number of recommendations. Central to this: the cognitive test posed a barrier for black candidates, so they recommended using a biographical test first to "maximiz[e] diversity," eliminating the vast majority of candidates prior to any cognitive test.

In 2012 and 2013, the NBCFAE continued pushing this process, with members meeting with the DOT, FAA, Congressional Black Caucus, and others to push diversity among ATCs. By July 2013, the FAA created a "Barrier Analysis Implemention Team" (BAIT, and I swear I am not making this acronym up).

Around this time, the FAA decided to pause the hiring of CTI graduates pending the implementation of the biographical assessment. Neither the schools that ran the CTI programs nor their students were informed of this when the decision was initially made. A number of students, including the class representative, passed the AT-SAT (in the case of the class representative, with a perfect score), not knowing they would never get to use it.

In 2014, the FAA rolled out the new biographical questionnaire in line with the Barrier Analysis recommendation, designed so that 90% or more of applicants would "fail." The questionnaire was not monitored, and people could take it at home. Questions asked prospective air traffic controllers how many sports they played in high school, how long they'd been unemployed recently, whether they were more eager or considerate, and seventy-some other questions. Graduates of the CTI program, like everyone else, had to "pass" this or they would be disqualified from further consideration. This came alongside other changes de-prioritizing CTI graduates.



CTI schools were blindsided and outraged by this change. A report on FAA hiring issues found that 70% of CTI administrators agreed that the changes in the process had led to a negative effect on the air traffic control infrastructure. One respondent stated their "numbers [had] been devastated," and the majority agreed that it would severely impact the health of their own programs. The largest program dropped from more than 600 students to less than 300.

Concurrent to all of this, NBCFAE members were hard at work. In particular, one Shelton Snow, an FAA employee and then-president of the NBCFAE's Washington Suburban chapter, provided NBCFAE members with "buzz words" in January 2014 that would automatically push their resumes to the tops of HR files. A 2013 NBCFAE meeting advised members to "please include [on resumes] if you are a NBCFAE Member. [...] Can you see the strategy", emphasizing they were "only concerned" with the employment of "African-Americans, women ... and other minorities."

After the 2014 biographical questionnaire was released, Snow took it a step further. As Fox Business reported (related in Rojas v. FAA), he sent voice-mail messages to NBCFAE applicants, advising them on the specific answers they needed to enter into the Biographical Assessment to avoid failing, stating that he was "about 99 point 99 percent sure that it is exactly how you need to answer each question."

Per a 2016 Yahoo Finance article, an internal FAA report cleared the NBCFAE and Snow of wrongdoing.



A few changes were made by 2015. In 2016, Congress passed Public Law 114-190, which among other things banned the use of biographical assessments as a first-line hiring tool for air traffic controllers.

People snubbed by the process filed dozens of lawsuits as a result, culminating in the class-action suit now underway as Brigida v. Buttigieg. In arguing to deny class certification, the defendants argued that the "underlying grievance--that they pursued college degrees in reliance on their perception that the role of the CTI program in the FAA's hiring process would never change--is not actionable."

In a moment with a certain bitter irony, black CTI graduates who were left adrift by this process are the only demographic left out of the class: while the plaintiffs tried to include them initially, the court denied certification until they were excluded. The class has been granted certification, and the suit is slowly rolling forward.

Finally, in 2024, @whstancil picked a fight with @Steve_Sailer, who like many in right-wing media had released occasional articles touching on this case. Their scuffle stirrred up enough attention towards it to catch my eye. @SashaGusevPosts, almost alone out of many who accepted my points and moved on, pushed me to look with a more skeptical eye. To win a petty bet with him, I elected to spend an evening digging into this. @raspy_aspie, who I shared early info with, drew my attention towards the initial exhibit I posted, and I went from there.

To get a bit personal for a moment: I was a day-one donor to @PeteButtigieg during his presidential campaign, impressed by his deep understanding and articulate defense of liberal principles. He has been saddled with a messy, stupid lawsuit built on bad decision after bad decision, from predecessors who--between a rock and a hard place in the impossible task of avoiding disparate impact while preserving objective standards--elected to take the easy road and cave to political pressure to implement absurdities. He has extraordinary power to end this mess in a moment and begin to make things right for those who were directly denied a chance at the jobs they had worked towards thanks to an arbitrary and perverse biographical questionnaire.

People will turn this into a culture war issue, and in one sense, that is perfectly fair: it represents a decades-long process of institutional failure at every level. A thousand things had to go wrong to get to this point, and if people want to harp on it—let them. But this is not a fundamentally partisan issue. Virtually nobody, looking dispassionately at that questionnaire, wants to defend it. Everybody wants competent, effective air traffic controllers. Everybody, I suspect, can sympathize with the people who paid and worked through years of education to have their career path suddenly pulled away for political reasons far beyond their control. I am confident that Buttigieg can see that just as well as the rest of us, that for many, it is simply the same neglect everybody else has shown towards the case that has led it to linger awkwardly unresolved for a decade.

There is nothing to be gained from fighting the suit further. It is a black eye on the FAA, a black eye on the DOT, and a black eye on our public institutions as a whole. People have paid shockingly little attention to it as it's rolled through the courts, in part, no doubt, because anything touching on diversity is a hot topic that becomes a culture war football in a moment. My instinct, looking at the whole mess, is that the DOT and FAA should publicly apologize, settle, and do their best to begin making right what was so badly broken.drive.google.com/drive/folders/…
ojs.library.okstate.edu/osu/index.php/…
finance.yahoo.com/news/faa-admit…Image
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@SecretaryPete The court records are sprawling and there is a great deal to go through with this story. I encourage interested parties to dig as much as possible. I am doing this in my spare time and do not have the resources to focus solely on it—there is enough here for many reports. Dig.
Mirrored at my blog. I am a passionate amateur who works on stories that interest me in my spare time. If you enjoy my writing and want to see more of it, please consider subscribing and spreading the word.

tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hir…
Also—if you’re wondering why you’re hearing about this from an independent blogger instead of a major media organization, an article I wrote a few months ago may shed some light on the situation.

tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-republic…
True and important. Download RECAP if you ever use PACER. If you want to see things like this, support public access to public records wherever possible.

Want to try your luck at the hiring process yourself? I've got you covered.

If you or someone you know has been personally affected by this, I want to hear from you. After hearing a few people, I think there are stories that deserve to be told here. Please DM me or email me at tracingwoodgrains@gmail.com if this applies to you.

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More from @tracewoodgrains

Jan 30
Let's play the "Get hired as an Air Traffic Controller" game. 90% of you will fail. Are you ready?

The first question is an easy one if you've been paying attention: Image
That's right! The answer is "science". well done, everyone.

Next two questions are "lowest college grade" and where you heard about this opportunity:
Image
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Did you say "history" and "a public notice or media advertisement"? Full points! I hope you didn't say you were referred by a friend; that'll set you back. Next up: Sports and grades. Think carefully—you only get one shot.
Image
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Read 9 tweets
Jan 29
guess what I did today

results coming Soon(tm) Image
a taste of things to come Image
by the way, if you have PACER access and are willing to acquire three documents or so, please DM me. I can reimburse. If they are anywhere near as interesting as the documents I've already found, it will be well worth your while.
Read 5 tweets
Jan 25
alright, let's talk about something everyone's been waiting for:

market failures in realistic fursuit procurement

did you know it's almost impossible to commission something like the below costumes, no matter the price?

most people, when they think of furries, think of cartoony, mascot-like costumes—and for good reason, since those are the great majority of costumes out there.

you've seen the sort

I regret to inform my furry followers that I've always hated these

there are a small handful, though, who take a different approach, aiming for fantasy realism instead

a low double-digit number of artists in the world make high-quality suits of this sort. almost all of them are Asian.

Read 9 tweets
Jan 6
Now that I've read all thousand-plus pages of arbitration documents rather than relying on headlines, I have my own apology to post:

I screwed. Twice actually. First I nodded along to @bryan_johnson's account of his experience based on my own prejudices. This was foolish of me and I regret it. Then I laughed along with him and millions of others when he tried to push people into denying events that actually happened, because I didn't like the people who were speaking against him and wanted to see them taken down a peg.

Because truth matters, and because I was so wrong, here is the truth:

Bryan Johnson did indeed win in court against his ex-fiancé after kicking her out of their house while she was in chemotherapy for stage 3 breast cancer. He did nothing illegal by convincing her to halve her salary and work for him while they were dating. It was all perfectly within the letter of the law when he tried, and failed, to get her to sign a cohabitation agreement saying she could say nothing negative about him without facing severe penalties. There was nothing against the law in sleeping around while promising her he'd be monogamous, and if her allegation that he brought a prostitute into their bed while she was there one night is accurate, well, that's not illegal either.

Nothing about their breakup was illegal. It was not illegal, a few months after her breast cancer diagnosis and, yes, after he hurt his hand—a factor he says, like the breast cancer, contributed to the decline of their relationship—and shortly after a chemotherapy treatment, to decide his fiancé was a net negative and ask her to leave their shared house because it would be too inconvenient for him to move out. It was not illegal—it was prudent, even—for him to first verbally promise to help with her expenses after forcing her to move out, then condition that help on a wildly restrictive separation agreement with penalties of $500,000 if she said anything negative about him.

And when she refused to sign that agreement and made a counteroffer, it was not illegal for him to rescind his permission for the lawyers she'd been relying on to keep representing her. Nor was it illegal for him to fire her, to threaten to take away her stock options, to threaten to come after her for back rent on their shared home after their breakup, to refuse to speak to her except via lawyers, or to try to get her to post a lie on social media about having had an amicable and mutual breakup.

It certainly wasn't illegal when he strung her along for a few months before using high-pressure sales tactics to convince her to sign another separation agreement for $1000 cash and the retention of her stock options. And having sex with her and showing pictures of his children to remind her of the good times a couple of days before she signed that agreement? Why, that's just prudent business. There's certainly nothing illegal about spending 600 times the amount she kept from that agreement in court to ensure he wouldn't have to give her another cent.

It must burn, Bryan, to have all those court documents available. It must burn to have so betrayed the person closest to you that she was willing to go $600,000 into the hole just to put on record for the world to see all the information you so badly wanted to keep private. It must hurt to know anyone who wants can read her earnest, heartfelt deposition next to your own maximally evasive one, and to realize that anyone who reads those two depositions alone will understand the reality of your relationships and your life.

Oh, sure, I imagine it's fun to watch people who don't know the story nod along, not knowing the only reason you won in arbitration is that the arbitrator treated it as a workplace dispute and concluded that the separation agreement you pressured someone you once loved into signing was not technically invalid, that even if you did do every single thing she alleged, none of it was technically illegal. But it must sting, yes? To know that people can know the truth?

Look, I'm not Mormon any more, and neither are you. You're more successful than I'll ever be by most metrics. But, you know, they still have some good advice sometimes. What was it Mormon leaders like to say? "No other success can compensate for failure in the home."

Enjoy your court victory, and rest assured that you have proven to all the world that there is nothing illegal about kicking your fiancé out of your house shortly after her chemotherapy for stage 3 breast cancer.

Thank goodness we don't need to be fooled by tabloid headlines anymore.Image
@bryan_johnson Oh, and I should also apologize directly to @slatzism who, while she is wrong about plenty of other things, seems to have been dead-on in her read of Bryan Johnson.
If anyone wants to read Bryan's own account of the breakup, here's his deposition.

Read 5 tweets
Jun 10, 2023
"Berkeley doesn't have affirmative action" is a good example of a technically defensible but straightforwardly false argument that obscures rather than elucidates. As soon as California banned affirmative action, Berkeley openly and urgently looked to circumvent it. ImageImage
This is what "no affirmative action" looks like at Berkeley: "comprehensive review" that happens to weight admissions in much the same way explicit affirmative action did.
city-journal.org/article/elites… Image
The data is unambiguous, such that there can be no substantive dispute. The affirmative action ban never stopped Berkeley from weighing race heavily within admissions. It just required them to get creative. eml.berkeley.edu/~webfac/morett… Image
Read 7 tweets
Jun 7, 2023
I find it odd when people frame benefits to advanced students as a negative.

Education is about learning. If someone is prepared to learn more than their peers, teaching them more is good. Aspire to teach students based on their capacity, not the average of kids their age. Image
This was in the context of a (frustrating) claim that G&T programs don't work. The reality is simple and intuitive: they work for the students they're aimed at. You cannot make a kid smart by putting them in gifted ed, but you can help smart kids learn.

My favorite one-stop resource for what works and what doesn't for advanced students is the SMPY. Key insight: virtually every form of academic acceleration is beneficial for students prepared for more than their peers. When in doubt, accelerate.

gwern.net/smpy
Read 5 tweets

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