On January 6, the U.S. federal government filed a brief in U.S. ex rel. Zafirov v. Florida Medical Associates urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to reverse a district judge’s ruling in a qui tam whistleblower case. In September, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida ruled that the False Claims Act’s qui tam provisions are unconstitutional, threatening to undermine the United States’ number one anti-fraud law.
The district court ruling found that the qui tam provisions were unconstitutional because they violated the Appointments Clause of Article II. The court ruled that by filing a qui tam lawsuit alleging Medicare fraud, whistleblower Clarissa Zafirov was granted “core executive power” without any “proper appointment under the Constitution.”
In its brief, the government claims that “other than the district court here, every court to have addressed the constitutionality of the False Claims Act’s qui tam provisions has upheld them.” It therefore urges the Eleventh Circuit to “join that consensus and reverse the district court’s outlier ruling.”
The government points to the Supreme Court decision in the 2000 case Vermont Agency of Natural Resources v. United States ex rel. Stevens, which held that the False Claims Act’s qui tam provisions are consistent with Article III. This decision “makes clear that relators do not exercise Executive power when they sue under the Act,” the brief states. “Rather, they are pursuing a private...
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