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Offerors Beware: Exceptions to Data Rights Requirements May Prove Fatal

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 02.03.16

In Deloitte Consulting, LLP (released Jan. 14, 2016), GAO held that, because the awardee’s proposal had taken exception to a solicitation provision that granted the government broader rights in materials (including software source code) than the rights conveyed by the FAR's standard data rights clause, it was unacceptable. This case serves as a reminder that the time for objecting to solicitation provisions, including those relating to technical data and computer software rights, is prior to proposal submission.

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Client Alert | 2 min read | 09.22.25

Department of Education Discontinues Discretionary Grant Funding for Minority-Serving Institutions

The Department of Education (DOE) announced on September 10, 2025, that it will end discretionary funding to several Minority-Serving Institution (MSI) grant programs that, it stated, “discriminate by conferring government benefits exclusively to institutions that meet racial or ethnic quotas.”[1] The agency stated that it would “us[e] its statutory authority to reprogram discretionary funds to programs that do not present such concerns.”[2] This announcement follows a July 2025 decision by the Department of Justice to no longer defend the constitutionality of a provision of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA) that authorizes grant funding to Hispanic-Serving institutions, after determining that such programs “violate the equal-protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.”[3]...