Bid Protests at GAO Fall to a Decade Low With a 14% Sustain Rate, Yet the Pentagon and GSA Push 'Loser Pays'

Companies filed 1,688 cases at GAO in fiscal 2025 challenging federal contract awards, according to GAO’s annual report to Congress. That’s 6% fewer than the year before and among the lowest counts in a decade. GAO decided 380 on the merits and sustained 53, a sustain rate of 14%, down from 16%.

The more telling number is the effectiveness rate: in 52% of cases the protester got some relief, either because GAO sustained the protest or because the agency fixed the problem itself before a decision.

What gets sustained

GAO’s most common reasons for sustaining protests were unreasonable technical evaluation, unreasonable cost or price evaluation, and unreasonable rejection of a proposal. Alternative dispute resolution, where GAO attorneys signal the likely outcome early, was used in 53 cases and succeeded 91% of the time.

In one case GAO reported that the Air Force declined to fully follow its recommendation, in a protest by ATP Gov. GAO asked Congress to pass a private bill reimbursing the company’s costs. Congress hadn’t acted by the time of the report.

Loser pays

Despite the decline, the Pentagon and GSA want to discourage protests further. Section 875 of the fiscal 2026 NDAA lets the Defense Department withhold up to 5% of payments to an incumbent contractor on a bridge or extension contract while that company’s protest is pending, and keep it if GAO dismisses the protest as baseless. The idea is to stop incumbents from protesting just to keep a contract running. The Pentagon’s implementing rule was due by June 2026 and hadn’t been proposed by August.

In July GSA asked Congress to extend the same approach to civilian agencies. It also asked to raise the threshold for protesting civilian task orders from $10 million to $35 million, matching the Pentagon’s threshold set in 2024. That would put most orders under GSA’s Multiple Award Schedules, covered in our post on the schedule, out of GAO’s reach.

Critics of loser pays point to GAO’s own numbers. With protests at a decade low and agencies taking corrective action in about half of cases, they argue protests are catching real errors.

The big 2026 fights

Two cases show what protests still do. In January GAO sustained protests by SOSi and Amentum against an $814 million Defense Intelligence Agency task order for intelligence support to Central Command, after recordings of oral presentations contradicted the agency’s evaluation.

The Army’s MAPS contract, a $50 billion vehicle for professional services, drew dozens of protests. An early one was sustained and forced the Army to accept small business teams. GAO denied the last five in late September. Its redacted decision, released on 6 October, upheld the Army’s mix of old and new FAR clauses while criticising the confusion, as covered in our FAR overhaul post.

What’s next

GAO’s fiscal 2026 report is due by December. It will show whether the FAR overhaul, with its changes to evaluation rules, has started to push protest numbers up again.