Whether a relator's admission that he derived his complaint from public disclosures triggers the public disclosure bar, whether the public disclosure bar is determined by a textual or extra-statutory test, whether the public disclosure bar requires 'actual' and 'concrete' fraud

QUESTIONS PRESENTED The Public Disclosure Bar (the “Bar”) of the False Claims Act (“FCA”), 31 U.S.C. § 3730(e)(4), provides that courts must dismiss an FCA case brought as a qui tam action by a relator who is not an original source of the information in his complaint “if substantially the same allegations or transactions as alleged in the action were publicly disclosed” in certain enumerated sources.' The Bar functions as a gatekeeping device to prevent parasitic lawsuits based on previously disclosed information, while allowing true insiders to advance new claims. The Circuits have been unable to devise a uniform standard for ascertaining when the Bar applies, and in doing so have deviated from the plain language of the Bar, resulting in conflict and confusion among the Circuits. The questions presented are: 1. Whether a relator’s admission that he, in fact, derived his complaint from public disclosures triggers the Bar, requiring an analysis of whether such a relator is an original source of the information in his complaint, as every other Circuit to consider the issue has held ! Prior to its amendment in 2010, the Bar provided that “[nJo court shall have jurisdiction over an action under this section based upon the public disclosure of allegations or transactions” in certain enumerated sources “unless the person bringing the action is an original source of the information.” 31 U.S.C. § 3730(e)(4) (2006). ii QUESTIONS PRESENTED — Continued held but that the Third Circuit below rejected, an issue as to which there is now a conflict among the Circuits, which raises an important question of federal law that has not been, but should be, settled by this Court. 2. Whether the application of section 3730(e)(4) is determined according to the textually based test applied in the Fourth, Fifth (pre-2017), Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits, under which a court asks only whether the disclosed allegations or transactions form the basis of, or are substantially similar to, a relator’s complaint; or according to the extra-statutory X+Y=Z test first articulated in United States ex rel. Springfield Terminal Railway Co. v. Quinn, 14 F.3d 645 (D.C. Cir. 1994) and adopted by the First, Second, Third, Fifth (post-2017), Sixth, and Ninth Circuits, an issue as to which the Circuits are divided, and which raises an important question of federal law that has not been, but should be, settled by this Court. 3. Whether the Third Circuit’s new, heightened standard, requiring that public disclosures reveal “actual” and “concrete” fraud, as opposed merely to a “possibility” or “inference” of fraud, as every other Circuit has held, unduly narrows the Bar, an issue as to which the Circuits are now divided, and which raises an important question of federal law that has not been, but should be, settled by this Court.