Government employees face few limitations in becoming relators under the False Claims Act. Courts have consistently allowed government employees to file qui tam actions based on information acquired during their work. The main potential barrier is whether the employee had a duty to report fraud as part of their job, thus negating the requirement that they voluntarily provide the information. However, this duty-to-report limitation is fact-specific and has been applied narrowly. Overall, government employees remain largely unrestricted in their ability to serve as relators and whistleblowers under the False Claims Act.
The Sixth Circuit found in United States v. A.D. Roe Co., 186 F.3d 717, 722 n. 5 (6th Cir. 1999), that "no court has accepted the argument that government employees per se can never be relators in a qui tam action." This holding follows the Eleventh Circuit's decision in U.S. ex rel. Williams v. NEC Corp., 931 F.2d 1493 (11th Cir. 1991), which also decided that "nothing in the False Claims Act prohibits a government employee from filing a qui tam action based upon information acquired while working for the government." A Fifth Circuit case from 2012, U.S. ex rel. Little and Arnold v. Shell Exploration & Prod., et al., 2012 WL 3089777 (5th Cir. 2012), found that government employees are considered private persons and could bring qui tam actions after the defendant argued they were not private persons.