The Substantial Weight Test: A Proposal to Resolve the Circuit's Disparate Interpretations of Materiality Under the False Claims Act

The False Claims Act (FCA) is a federal statute that imposes civil liability on any person who presents or causes to be presented a false or fraudulent monetary claim for disbursement of United States governmental funds. While some form of the Act has been in force since the Civil War, courts are still unsure of how to interpret the widely-used statute. In particular, courts have been wildly inconsistent regarding materiality under the FCA. Before Congress passed the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009 (FERA), materiality was not an express element of the statute, and as a result, some circuits declined to recognize materiality as an element of an FCA claim. Other circuits held that materiality was implicitly required and should be considered. Those circuits finding materiality as an element of an FCA claim were and remain split on what test applies to determine materiality under the