OMB Seeks to Jettison Defense CAS Board and De-Couple CAS and TINA
Client Alert | 1 min read | 06.07.19
In late April, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) sent a letter to Congress containing a number of legislative proposals to streamline and improve the federal acquisition process for inclusion in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Two of those proposals relate to the Cost Accounting Standards (CAS). The first calls for the disestablishment of the Defense CAS Board—which was a product of the FY 2017 NDAA—to avoid creating a more complicated CAS regulatory framework. The second would de-link the monetary threshold for CAS from the Truthful Cost or Pricing Data threshold (formerly known as TINA), and increase the basic threshold for CAS applicability from $2 million to $15 million. These are two recommendations that the Section 809 Panel made in Volume II of its Report (the CAS Board is also considering repeal of the provisions establishing the Defense CAS Board and increasing the CAS applicability thresholds).
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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
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