On January 30, 2024, the Biden administration proposed a rule (the Salary Rule) that would amend the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to “prohibit contractors and subcontractors from seeking and considering information about a job applicant’s compensation history when making employment decisions for certain positions.” The new rule would also require contractors and subcontractors to disclose
Bradley’s Government Contracts Practice Group recently published a Law360 Expert Analysis article entitled “The 5 Most Important Bid Protest Decisions of 2023.” This article provides summaries of the most noteworthy bid protest decisions from the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and the Government Accountability Office in 2023 and discusses how these cases might shape future
Bradley has been publishing an ongoing survey of state-level bid protest processes and procedures (see, e.g., our post on “Bid Protests in New York” and our “Update on Bid Protests in Alabama”). For the next state in this ongoing series, we focus on the bid protest procedures in the
On June 2, 2023, the Civilian Agency Acquisition Council and the Defense Acquisition Regulations Council issued an interim rule to implement a new statutory requirement that, in short, bans the TikTok app from devices used in the performance of federal government contracts (TikTok Rule). The TikTok Rule introduces a new FAR clause, FAR 52.204-27
We recently reported on the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) decision in AttainX. As we explained, the AttainX decision is noteworthy because the GAO held that, notwithstanding the fact that a solicitation does not require examples from the joint venture itself or the individual members, the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) regulations require the agency to
The Government Accountability Office (GAO), in AttainX, recently sustained a bid protest where the protester argued that the agency’s evaluation was inconsistent with the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) regulations requiring agencies to consider the experience of the individual members of the joint venture if the joint venture itself does not demonstrate experience. This article
On January 30, 2023, the Biden administration stated that it intends to extend the previously declared COVID-19 national emergency and the separately declared public health emergency until May 11, 2023, and then end both emergency declarations. This statement comes in response to Congressional attempts to declare an earlier end date to the emergencies with the
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently issued its annual bid protest report. As discussed below, this year’s report is noteworthy for multiple reasons, including that it shows that protesters received some form of relief from the procuring agency in more than half of the protests filed with the GAO in fiscal year (FY) 2022.
The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) recently issued a final rule that provides two new methods for small business government contractors to obtain past performance ratings to be used in support of offers on prime contracts with the federal government. The purpose of the rule is to address a common problem faced by small businesses
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in SEKRI, Inc. v. United States, recently added to the growing body of case law that has declined to extend the scope of the Blue & Gold waiver rule. Under the Blue & Gold rule, “a party who has the opportunity to object to the