SBA responds to ASBL lawsuit

The Small Business Administration has asked for the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by the American Small Business League. The suit alleges that the SBA uses “creative accounting” for its annual small business goaling report.

The SBA argues that the court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the allegations.

Furthermore, the SBA said the ASBL’s allegation that flaws in the goaling report were causing small business contracting to lag were “speculative and result not from SBA’s actions but from individual contracting decisions across multiple federal agencies.”

ASBL issued a response to SBA’s motion.

“The SBA is trying to deny any legal obligation to give an accurate report on the true level of small business participation as the statutes requires,” ASBL attorney Robert Belshaw said in a press release.

For several years, ASBL has been charging SBA with “fraud” in how it compiles the goaling reports, in large part because the ASBL found examples of Fortune 500 companies that had received contracts designated for small businesses. However, legal experts have said that, in addition to simple errors, there were legitimate reasons that a Fortune 500 company might receive an occasional small business contract. For example, in some cases the contract might be awarded to a small business which was subsequently acquired, after which it reports its new status as “other than small.”

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