A litigation team led by Dirk Haire of Fox Rothschild secured a key victory Sunday in a bid protest challenging former President Joe Biden’s policy requiring project labor agreements on all federal construction projects valued at $35 million or more.

In MVL USA, Inc., et al.. v. United States, Judge Ryan T. Holte of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled the Biden administration’s project labor agreement policy violated existing law.

The Associated General Contractors of America, a large commercial construction trade association that represents many of the nation’s largest federal infrastructure contractors, hired Fox Rothschild in April 2024 to develop a strategy to challenge Biden’s Executive Order 14603. The order required every large federal government construction contract to be completed under union labor terms and conditions.

Fox developed a groundbreaking strategy utilizing bid protests, which challenged the policy as an unauthorized procurement “set-aside” for labor unions that violated the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA), which requires “full and open” market competition for government contracts unless a statutory exception applies. 

In a statement, the AGC praised Fox’s novel strategy, which involved seven individual bid protests that were ultimately consolidated into a single case.

“This bid protest approach provided a quicker, and more effective way to challenge the outgoing president’s anti-competitive and illegal Executive Order and FAR Rules,” said Jeffrey Shoaf, the AGC’s Chief Executive Officer.

He said the court’s decision “will allow all construction workers and their employers to compete fairly and without government-mandated coercion for large federal construction projects.”

Fox represented five of the six companies who filed protests, including the lead protestor MVL USA Inc. Joseph Cohen, Sean Milani-nia, Laura Caplin, David Timm, Jane Han, and Michael Brewer of Fox Rothschild assisted with the case. 

Smith Currie Oles represented the sixth protesting company.

A copy of the court’s decision can be read here.