STATEMENT: TAF Coalition Statement on Zafirov Appeal
Washington, DC – This week, the government and the relator appealed the recent decision in U.S. ex rel. Zafirov v. Florida Medical Associates, which held the False Claims Act’s qui tam provisions violate Article II of the U.S. Constitution.
“This appeal gives the Eleventh Circuit the opportunity to preserve the law as it has been interpreted by each of its sister circuits to consider this constitutional question, and to maintain the government’s most important tool for fighting fraud,” said Jacklyn DeMar, President & CEO of The Anti-Fraud Coalition. “The recent holding by a single district court judge was an outlier breaking with years of precedent and tradition of whistleblowing celebrated since this nation’s founding.”
Since 1986, False Claims Act whistleblower cases account for nearly $53 billion of the $75 billion recovered under the law.
Whistleblowers are crucial to the government’s fraud fighting efforts and this public-private partnership has been a successful part of American jurisprudence and civil enforcement since the Civil War.
For more information on this topic, please contact James King, Director of Communications & Digital at [email protected].
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