An order dismissing a False Claims Act complaint against the Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education should be vacated based on an intervening Supreme Court decision on the scienter element of the statute, a U.S. District Court judge has ruled.
The relator, Ocean State Transit, brought a qui tam action alleging that the defendant commissioner falsely certified that RIDE complied with federal COVID-19 relief statutes. On April 28, the complaint was dismissed, resulting in the entry of a judgment in favor of the defendant.
The relator subsequently moved to alter or amend that judgment, claiming a change in the controlling law in light of United States ex rel. Schutte v. SuperValu Inc., 143 S. Ct. 1391 (2023), issued on June 1.
In Schutte, the Supreme Court resolved a circuit split over whether an FCA claimant must allege a statement or conduct that represents an “objective falsehood.” The Supreme Court rejected the “objective falsehood” requirement and held instead that the FCA’s scienter element refers to respondents’ knowledge and subjective beliefs — not to what an objectively reasonable person may have known or believed.
“Here, in the Order granting the Commissioner’s Motion to Dismiss, this Court applied the now-defunct objective falsehood standard, holding that Commissioner’s argument that her certification that RIDE ‘shall to the greatest extent practicable’ continue to pay its contractors cannot constitute an objective falsehood ‘because she...
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