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Fourth Circuit Weighs in on Public Disclosure Bar and Retroactivity

Client Alert | 1 min read | 12.13.13

The Fourth Circuit in U.S. ex rel. Radcliffe v. Purdue Pharma.(Dec. 12, 2013) became the first court of appeals to address whether the FCA's public disclosure bar is still jurisdictional after its 2010 amendment by the Affordable Care Act (a topic about which Crowell & Moring attorneys wrote articles in March and September) and held that it is not, reasoning that the word jurisdiction was excised from the statute and that the government was newly empowered to veto application of the bar. This decision came in the context of a broader analysis in which the court clarified that the date of the allegedly fraudulent conduct, not the date that the complaint was filed, governs potential retroactive effect.


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Client Alert | 3 min read | 11.21.25

A Sign of What’s to Come? Court Dismisses FCA Retaliation Complaint Based on Alleged Discriminatory Use of Federal Funding

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....

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