On September 30, 2024, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida ruled that filing claims on behalf of the government under qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act (FCA) is unconstitutional in United States of America ex rel. Clarissa Zafirov v. Florida Medical Associates, LLC, et al. The ruling, made by Judge Kathryn Mizelle, a 33-year-old Trump-appointee, declares that False Claims Act whistleblowers undermine executive power by filing qui tam lawsuits.

The Zafirov decision follows a recent dissent by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in which he questioned the constitutionality of the FCA’s qui tam provisions. It also follows a political movement pushing the Unitary Executive Theory in the United States judicial courts.

This controversial decision mischaracterizes the qui tam provisions of the FCA and will likely be appealed to the Eleventh Circuit. Should the ruling stand, however, it and other similar challenges to the constitutionality of the FCA’s qui tam provisions will cripple what has been America’s number 1 anti-fraud law. Since the False Claims Act was modernized in 1986, qui tam whistleblower cases have allowed the government to recover more than $52 billion from fraudsters, over $5 billion of which came in cases where the government chose not to intervene.

Applying the ‘Unitary Executive’ Theory to Paint Whistleblowers as ‘Self-Selected Private Bounty Hunters’

Originally passed during the Civil War, the False Claims Act...

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