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COFC Reverses Another Cica Stay Override

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 05.10.04

Although the protester’s incumbent contract (and the 6-month extension) had expired, in Keeton Corrections, Inc. v. U.S., (March 17, 2004), the Court of Federal Claims rejected as arbitrary and capricious an override decision that was premised on the purported necessity of using the awarded contract to deliver necessary correctional services to the Bureau of Prisons. The court found that the agency had not explained why sole source purchase orders could not be used to obtain the necessary services pending GAO’s protest decision, and held that such sole source orders (issued either to the protester or the awardee) would be permissible under the circumstances, and would be less harmful to competition than an override of the CICA stay.

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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].”...

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