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CFC Faults GSA's False Statistical Precision In Major Evaluation

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 03.10.08

In Serco Inc. v. United States (Mar. 5, 2008), Judge Allegra sustained protests brought by eight unsuccessful offerors for GSA's $50 billion government-wide acquisition contract for IT products and services after finding unequal treatment in the gathering of past performance information and flaws in the price evaluation and best value tradeoff analysis. Raising an issue never before considered in a bid protest, the court held that false statistical precision in the combined technical scores "intensified the need for the agency to make reasoned decisions considering price and, relatedly, best values."

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Client Alert | 3 min read | 06.12.26

DOJ Guidance Backs Away From Disparate Impact Liability

On June 9, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a formal opinion concluding that the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission’s (EEOC) existing interpretations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) disparate-impact liability, including the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (UGESP), are unconstitutional. According to the opinion, EEOC’s prior interpretations contemplate liability based on disproportionately adverse effects alone, without regard to an employer’s likely intent, rather than treating disparate impact as an evidentiary mechanism to “smoke out” intentional discrimination. DOJ found that this approach functions as a “qualified racial-proportionality mandate” that places “a racial thumb on the scales, often requiring employers to evaluate the racial outcomes of their policies, and to make decisions based on (because of) those racial outcomes.” The opinion fulfills one mandate of Executive Order 14281, which rejected disparate-impact liability insofar as it “creates a near insurmountable presumption that unlawful discrimination exists wherever there are any differences in outcomes among different [demographic groups].”...