What The Far Council Giveth The Dar Council Taketh Away
Client Alert | 1 min read | 12.20.06
After several years of consideration, the FAR and DAR Councils published three related sets of regulations in the Federal Register on December 12, 2006, addressing controversial issues about time and material (T&M) and Labor Hour (LH) contracts (see notice on left about upcoming webinar on these regulations). The FAR Council published two final rules permitting competitively awarded contracts for commercial items to qualify as commercial item contracts (with important limitations, including unprecedented rights to interview employees as part of a standard audit) and permitting contractors to bill for work performed by subcontractors on T&M/LH contracts in one of three ways (leaving it to each individual agency to decide which method to permit on the agency’s contracts), while the DAR Council published an interim rule adopting the method of billing subcontractor labor that is likely to be least attractive to industry.
Insights
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
