Approved: E-Signatures for CDA Claim Certifications Receive the ASBCA’s Stamp of Approval
Client Alert | 1 min read | 10.30.19
In URS Federal Services, Inc., ASBCA 61443 (October 3, 2019), the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals addressed whether a contractor’s digital signature complied with the CDA’s claim certification requirements. The signature in question was electronically affixed to the claim document—along with a digital certificate—using software that required the signer to input a unique password and user identification before signing. The government argued that one “cannot trust the [digital] certificate to prove the identity of the person who applied it,” because there was no “suitable ID” to prove the signer’s identity. While noting that it had previously found typed but unsigned names to be insufficient, the Board rejected the government’s argument, because the digital signature was “discrete” and “verifiable” in accordance with the CDA’s requirements. The Board reasoned that “[n]o ink signature, on its face, includes any way for the reader to know who executed it unless that reader already possesses an intimate familiarity with the certifier’s handwriting” and declined to “impose draconian demands on digital signatures, not required to be met for their ink counterparts.”
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Client Alert | 3 min read | 11.21.25
On November 7, 2025, in Thornton v. National Academy of Sciences, No. 25-cv-2155, 2025 WL 3123732 (D.D.C. Nov. 7, 2025), the District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed a False Claims Act (FCA) retaliation complaint on the basis that the plaintiff’s allegations that he was fired after blowing the whistle on purported illegally discriminatory use of federal funding was not sufficient to support his FCA claim. This case appears to be one of the first filed, and subsequently dismissed, following Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s announcement of the creation of the Civil Rights Fraud Initiative on May 19, 2025, which “strongly encourages” private individuals to file lawsuits under the FCA relating to purportedly discriminatory and illegal use of federal funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in violation of Executive Order 14173, Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity (Jan. 21, 2025). In this case, the court dismissed the FCA retaliation claim and rejected the argument that an organization could violate the FCA merely by “engaging in discriminatory conduct while conducting a federally funded study.” The analysis in Thornton could be a sign of how forthcoming arguments of retaliation based on reporting allegedly fraudulent DEI activity will be analyzed in the future.
Client Alert | 3 min read | 11.20.25
Client Alert | 3 min read | 11.20.25
Client Alert | 6 min read | 11.19.25
