JSToogood, LLC d-b-a Joint Strategic Technologies--Costs (B-423600.3)

You should not care.

Categories: Protest costs, corrective action, meritorious claims

Date: 11 December 2025

URL: https://www.gao.gov/products/b-423600.3

JSToogood asked GAO to recommend reimbursement of protest costs after the Air Force took corrective action in a procurement for tactical and operations readiness support services. The fight here was not over the underlying award, but over which protest grounds were clearly meritorious enough to justify fees.

GAO dismissed the request in part and denied it in part. The Air Force agreed to reimburse costs tied to JST’s challenge to the evaluation of its own past technical experience, along with a derivative source-selection challenge that was intertwined with that issue. GAO therefore treated that portion as resolved.

For JST’s separate attacks on the awardee’s proposal, however, GAO found those issues were severable and not clearly meritorious on their own. Because the agency had articulated defensible positions on those allegations, and the later supplemental theories were not simply obvious extensions of the initial protest, GAO would not recommend reimbursement for them.

Digest

1. Reimbursement for protest costs is dismissed, in part, where the agency has agreed to pay costs for an allegation that it concedes is clearly meritorious and that the agency unduly delayed taking corrective action, and has also agreed to pay costs for certain derivative allegations that the agency agrees are intertwined.
2. Reimbursement for remaining protest costs is denied where the allegations are severable from the agreed-upon clearly meritorious challenge and do not by themselves demonstrate clear merit.