The following is an installment in Crowell & Moring’s Bid Protest Sustain of the Month Series. In this series, Crowell’s Government Contracts Practice will keep you up to date with a summary of one of the most notable bid protest sustain decisions each month. Below, Crowell Consultant (and former GAO Bid Protest Hearing Officer) Cherie Owen discusses GAO’s first sustain decision of 2026, which included an important discussion of unequal treatment.
GAO issued only one sustain decision in January 2026: Amentum Technology Inc.; SOS International LLC, B-4238989 et al., Jan. 27, 2026, which sustained protests filed by two companies challenging the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA’s) award of a contract to General Dynamics Information Technology, Inc. (GDIT). The procurement sought a contractor to support the USCENTCOM Intelligence Directorate in performing consolidated intelligence analysis and associated activities.
After DIA awarded the contract, Amentum (represented by Crowell) and SOS International (SOSi) protested, alleging a number of evaluation errors. GAO sustained the protests of both companies. Amentum argued that DIA had engaged in unequal treatment by holding Amentum to a different, higher standard than other offerors. In doing so, the Agency subjected it to “a systematically unfair evaluation” by failing to credit Amentum with a strength for its approach while simultaneously recognizing a strength in GDIT’s proposal – even though Amentum proposed an approach that had “far more detail” and was “more rigorous than” GDIT’s.
The Agency attempted to defend the protest with citations to GAO decisions holding that unequal treatment exists only where the language in one proposal is substantively indistinguishable from, or nearly identical to the language of another proposal. GAO rejected the Agency’s argument, recognizing that disparate treatment – or, as GAO referred to it in the decision, “Unfair Treatment” – exists when an agency fails to “treat all offerors equally and evaluate their proposals evenhandedly” as DIA did here. For example, despite Amentum’s equal or better discussion of training, DIA assigned GDIT a strength while assigning Amentum a weakness. Regardless of whether the proposal language was identical, the Agency was required to treat offerors fairly and equally in conducting its evaluation.
GAO also sustained SOSi’s protest, which challenged a weakness DIA assigned based upon words SOSi never said. In its evaluation, DIA downgraded SOSi for purportedly discussing “legacy networks that have been decommissioned over 8 years.” The problem, however, was that SOSI never referenced these networks. After reviewing both the written record and the audio recordings of SOSi’s presentation, GAO concluded that there was not a shred of evidence supporting the Agency’s assignment of this weakness. Even though the record refuted the assignment of the weakness, DIA asked GAO to simply accept the evaluator’s assertions that SOSi should be downgraded. GAO declined that request concluding that the evaluation was unsupported and sustaining the protest.
GAO’s first sustain decision of 2026 highlights the vital role protests play in ensuring agencies are held to a standard of fairness and accountability. This decision serves as a reminder that offerors should not hesitate to challenge evaluations that reflect unequal treatment or unsupported findings. By sustaining the protests in this case, GAO reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining level playing fields and transparent processes in government procurement. As we move forward in 2026, vigilance and timely challenges remain essential tools for protecting contractors’ rights in the procurement process.