A class-action lawsuit has been filed against the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) alleging that the agency implemented discriminatory hiring practices that rejected over 1,000 qualified air traffic controller applicants based on race, particularly targeting graduates of the Collegiate Training Initiative (CTI) program who were predominantly white.

The lawsuit, known as Brigida v. Buttigieg, was initiated by Andrew Brigida, a CTI graduate who scored 100% on his training exam but was rejected after the FAA introduced a new biographical assessment in 2013.

Andrew Brigida, a white graduate of Arizona State University's CTI program, passed the AT-SAT exam with a perfect score of 100% in April 2013 but failed the newly implemented biographical questionnaire in 2014 Brigida v. Buttigieg (Brigida v. Buttigieg, 538 F.Supp.3d 12 (D. D.C. 2021)) - vLex United States - vLex. Matthew Douglas-Cook, a Native American who also scored perfectly on the AT-SAT, similarly failed the biographical questionnaire

The questionnaire included unusual questions for would-be air traffic controllers, such as how many sports they played in high school, how long they'd been unemployed recently, and whether their lowest grade in high school was in science

In February 2022, the court certified the class action on behalf of all non-African American CTI graduates who graduated between 2009-2013, passed the AT-SAT, applied through the 2014 vacancy announcement, but failed the biographical questionnaire

As late as 2024, the FAA was recruiting those with targeted disabilities, including "hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism"