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OCI Mitigation Doesn't Go Far Enough

Client Alert | 1 min read | 02.13.06

In Greenleaf Constr. Co. (Jan. 17, 2006, http://www.gao.gov/decisions/bidpro/29310518.pdf), GAO found an unmitigated organizational conflict of interest because the owner of the awardee was to receive a stream of payments from another contractor that the awardee would be overseeing and evaluating and whose economic well-being the awardee therefore could significantly affect. The owner of the awardee had been required by the agency to sell the other contractor in order to avoid having an OCI interest in the profits of that other contractor, but GAO found that the interest of the awardee's owner in ensuring that the other contractor would be able to continue making the payments to him might impair the awardee's objectivity in performing its contract evaluation duties.

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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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