Background
Dr. Clarissa Zafirov filed a False Claims Act qui tam action on behalf of the United States against her employer and related entities. She alleged that the defendants knowingly submitted false diagnosis codes to obtain Medicare payments exceeding the amounts to which they were entitled. The United States initially declined to intervene but later intervened for the limited purpose of defending the FCA’s qui tam provisions against constitutional challenges.
The defendants argued that those provisions violate Article II’s Appointments, Take Care, and Vesting Clauses. The district court held that FCA relators are officers of the United States who must be constitutionally appointed, dismissed the action under the Appointments Clause, and did not reach the other two challenges. Zafirov and the United States appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Eleventh Circuit held that FCA relators are not officers of the United States because they do not occupy a continuing position established by law. Relators serve only for particular cases, have temporary and intermittent tenure, receive no continuing compensation, and perform personal duties that another relator cannot simply assume. Their potential share of a successful recovery is a one-time, contingent award rather than a continuing emolument.
The court rejected the defendants’ theory that the FCA creates a permanent “office of relator,” observing that no such office appears in the statute or any other law. Because the absence of a continuing position was sufficient to resolve the Appointments Clause issue, the court did not decide whether relators exercise significant federal authority or executive power. It vacated the dismissal and remanded for the district court to consider the defendants’ Take Care Clause and Vesting Clause arguments in the first instance.
Key Takeaways
- An FCA relator is not an officer of the United States subject to the Appointments Clause because the relator does not occupy a continuing position established by law.
- A qui tam action’s potentially lengthy duration does not make the relator’s role continuing when the role is confined to one case, carries no regular compensation, and cannot ordinarily be transferred to another relator.
- The decision resolves only the Appointments Clause challenge; the district court must still address the defendants’ Take Care Clause and Vesting Clause arguments on remand.
Why It Matters
The decision removes an Appointments Clause obstacle to private enforcement under the FCA within the Eleventh Circuit and aligns the court with other circuits that have rejected that constitutional theory. It preserves Zafirov’s Medicare-fraud action from dismissal on that ground.
The broader Article II dispute remains unresolved, however. The district court must now determine whether the FCA’s allocation of authority between relators and the executive branch violates the Take Care or Vesting Clause.