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Employee Unions And Elected Representatives Lack Standing For GAO Protests Of Private Sector Awards In A-76 Competitions

Client Alert | 1 min read | 05.10.04

In Dan Duefrene; Kelley Dull; Brenda Neuerburg; Gabrielle Martin, B-293590.2, .3: B-293883; B-293887: B-293908 (April 19, 2004), the GAO ruled definitively that union officials and other elected representatives of government employees who lose to a private sector offeror in competitions conducted under Revised OMB Circular A-76 (May 29, 2003) do not have standing under the Competition In Contracting Act (CICA) to protest at the GAO. Stating that its jurisdiction is constrained by CICA's definition of an "interested party," which limits protest rights to actual offerors eligible to be awarded a "contract" -- and despite the Revised Circular's attempt to implement the recommendation of the Commercial Activities Panel and recast the government side of an A-76 competition in terms intended to confer standing for government employee representatives -- GAO reasoned that the government's tender offer, even if successful, would not result in the award of a "contract" under CICA and, hence, employee representatives of the government could not be interested parties with standing to protest.

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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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