Watchdog Sues Air Force for Docs on Failed DEI Experiment

The Center to Advance Security in America, a military watchdog group, sued the U.S. Air Force on Monday, seeking documents related to an experiment that sought to "cluster" racial minorities and women into a separate class from other trainees to see if it would improve graduation rates.

The lawsuit asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to enforce a Freedom of Information Act request it filed in October 2023 seeking records regarding the 2021 experiment conducted by the 19^th Air Force command in San Antonio, The Daily Caller reported.

The 19^th Air Force command is responsible for training more than 30,000 U.S. and allied students annually in numerous specialties, such as aircrews, remotely piloted aircraft crews, air battle managers, and weapons directors.

The experiment failed to show an increase in graduation rates, and officers involved with the project alleged they were forced to engage in unlawful discrimination.

"In 2021, the Biden DOD [Department of Defense] ran a DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] experiment in the Air Force aimed at increasing flight school graduation rates for women and minorities," CASA Director James Fitzpatrick told The Daily Caller. "It failed miserably, and some involved were openly skeptical of its legality."

"This lawsuit will force the Air Force to provide the records and communications related to this effort in order to educate the public on this failed attempt by the Biden administration to inject DEI into Air Force flight school."

Officers involved with the program said in a memo previously obtained by The Daily Caller that they were pressured to meet certain demographics in making the special class, dubbed "America's class." The class contained 62% underrepresented groups, far exceeding the average of about one-third in other classes, according to a Daily Caller data analysis from 2020 to 2023.

"When other priorities, like gender or race, are introduced as a metric of assignment and advancement, the foundations of performance-based competition are sacrificed, and the emphasis on safety takes a back seat," an Air Force instructor pilot and former trainer for Undergraduate Pilot Training, who spoke on a condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisal, told The Daily Caller.

An Air Force spokesperson declined to comment to Newsmax.

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