State Slammed For Adopting GAO Recommendation

In Grunley Walsh Int'l v. U.S. (Fed. Cl. Aug. 3, 2007), in which Crowell & Moring represented the successful plaintiff, the Court of Federal Claims held that the Department of State acted arbitrarily when it adopted a GAO recommendation to reverse its own, longstanding interpretation of the total business volume requirement in the Diplomatic Construction Program statute (22 U.S.C. § 4852). The government argued that the court must defer to State's revised interpretation, but the Court refused to do so, because that would "effectively strip this court of any real review in any case where the agency followed a recommendation of the GAO on an interpretation of a statute or regulation."