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GAO Faults USTRANSCOM’s Past Performance Evaluation of Awardee’s “Miniscule” Past Work

Client Alert | 1 min read | 04.03.17

In XPO Logistics Worldwide Gov’t Servs., LLC (released Mar. 21, 2017), in which C&M co-represented XPO, GAO sustained a protest challenging the awardee’s past performance rating, setting aside USTRANSCOM’s award of a $3B freight services contract. GAO found that the value of the awardee’s past efforts are extremely small relative to the value of the requirement, that the contemporaneous record did not explain the basis for the agency’s determination that these tiny past efforts were somewhat relevant under the solicitation, and that the agency’s post hoc reevaluation during the protest was unreasonable. GAO recommended that the agency reevaluate the awardee’s past performance and then make a new award decision.

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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].”...