Speak Now Or Forever Hold Your Protest: Intervenor’s Silence Waives Future Protest Grounds
Client Alert | 1 min read | 05.05.21
When is the deadline to file a bid protest, and what actions or inactions can cause potential future protest arguments to be waived? These seemingly simple questions can have surprising answers. In a recent bid protest decision, GAO held that a contract awardee can waive potential protest grounds by failing to raise them when intervening in a competitor’s bid protest of its award. See VS2, LLC, B-418942.4, B-418942.5, Feb. 25, 2021, 2021 CPD ¶ --, 2021 WL 873343. C&M’s Eric Ransom and Rob Sneckenberg explain the VS2 decision and provide useful takeaways for contract awardees in this “Feature Comment” published in The Government Contractor.
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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
