How the Coronavirus Crisis Reveals Weaknesses Not Just in America’s Public Health Systems But in Our Constitutional Doctrines

VIKRAM DAVID AMAR

Illinois Law dean and professor Vikram David Amar explains how the current crisis caused by the novel coronavirus reveals flaws in both America’s public health system and also in the country’s constitutional doctrines. Responding in part to Professor Michael C. Dorf’s column of March 15 urging uniform federal restrictions, Amar expresses doubt as to whether Congress’s powers under Article I of the Constitution permit imposition of such a lockdown in the first place.

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Sayers v. Department of Veterans Affairs

Docket: 18-2195

Opinion Date: March 31, 2020

Judge: Todd Michael Hughes

Areas of Law: Government & Administrative Law, Labor & Employment Law

The VA promoted Dr. Sayers to Chief of Pharmacy Services for the Greater Los Angeles (GLA) Health Care System in 2003. In 2016, a VA site-visit team discovered violations of policy in the pharmacies under Sayers’s supervision. When Sayers failed to follow orders to immediately correct the violations, the VA detailed him from his position pending review. Months later, the VA sent another team to the GLA pharmacies, discovering numerous, serious policy violations. Because compliance fell within Sayers’s purview, the GLA Chief of Staff proposed Sayers’s removal. The GLA Health Care Director acted as the deciding official and sustained the charges. The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and the Administrative Judge affirmed his removal, finding that substantial evidence supported factual specifications that Sayers failed to perform assigned duties and failed to follow instructions. The AJ declined to consider Sayers’s argument that his removal constituted an unreasonable penalty, inconsistent with the VA’s table of penalties and violating the VA’s policy of progressive discipline. The Federal Circuit vacated his removal. The basis for Sayers’s removal, the 2017 Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act, 38 U.S.C. 714, which gives the VA a new, streamlined authority for disciplining employees for misconduct or poor performance, and places limitations on MSPB review of those actions, cannot be retroactively applied to conduct that occurred before its enactment.

WellPoint Military Care Corp. v. United States

Docket: 19-2225

Opinion Date: March 31, 2020

Judge: Timothy B. Dyk

Areas of Law: Government Contracts

The VA issued a contract to OPSS for developing and managing the VA’s program to provide veterans access to community-based healthcare in Region 3 of the WellPoint, an unsuccessful bidder, brought a bid protest action. The Claims Court found that the VA conducted a reasonable best value determination, denied WellPoint’s request for injunctive relief, and dismissed WellPoint’s bid protest challenge. The Federal Circuit affirmed. The VA’s methodology for evaluating price in connection with this procurement was both reasonable and in accordance with the terms of the Solicitation. The court noted the three levels at which the proposals were evaluated and found no showing that alleged errors in first-tier revies carried over to the final decision. Even if an error had been carried over, WellPoint has not demonstrated that “but for the error, it would have had a substantial chance of securing the contract.”