(Bloomberg) -- A hearing on the Pentagon's face-off with Oracle Corp., which is challenging the terms of a $10 billion cloud-computing contract awarded to Microsoft Corp., was canceled Friday by a U.S. appeals court that's been closed because of federal troops outside its doors.
A new date will be set, according to a notice on the website of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The court, located on Lafayette Square near the White House, was closed this week after federal troops shut the park to people protesting the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by Minneapolis police.
“At the recommendation of law enforcement authorities” the courthouse will be closed through Sunday “in order to permit officials to make preparations to accommodate large crowds expected to gather in the vicinity of the White House over the coming weekend,” Chief Deputy Clerk Jarrett Perlow said in a statement.
The arguments were scheduled to be heard by phone. The court has been closed to the public because of the coronavirus pandemic, but employees were still working in the building.
The court announced late Thursday that it would be closed to staff as well on Friday, and the three cases set for argument would be rescheduled. The other two were patent disputes involving semiconductors and light-emitting diodes -- the Federal Circuit is the nation's top patent court.
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The Court of Federal Claims, the trial court where the Oracle case was originally heard, is in the same building and also is closed, according to a notice on that court's website.
The front entrance of the National Courts Building, as it's known, is often shut off for big public events like protests and presidential inaugurations. Normally, though, members of the public and employees can enter by a side entrance.
Retired Federal Circuit Chief Judge Paul Michel, who served on the court from 1988 to 2010, said he couldn't recall any unscheduled closures of the court building other than for weather. The only possible exception was after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism attacks, he said.
“I don't recall anything in the 80s or 90s that amounted to a complete lockout of staff and everybody else,” Michel said. “In the time I was chief judge, from 2004 to May 2010, we never had to close the entire building for any kind of security-related issue.”
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The Federal Circuit hears arguments during the first full week of the month, and it considered cases earlier this week, even as protesters filled the nearby park. On Friday it continued to post opinions and orders on its electronic docket.
The National Courts Building stretches almost the entire east side of Lafayette Square. It includes the house where former first lady Dolley Madison spent her final days, and where the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had its first offices. The Federal Circuit courtrooms are in the location where Secretary of State William Seward was wounded by a co-conspirator of John Wilkes Booth on the night President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.
The park, part of the National Park Service, has become a flashpoint in the debate over how much local control District of Columbia officials have in the areas adjacent to the White House.
Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, criticized the use of pepper spray and flashbangs to clear the park of protesters on Monday so President Donald Trump could walk through to the nearby St. John's Episcopal Church.
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Bowser on Friday had Department of Public Works officials and local artists paint “Black Lives Matter” and the district's insignia -- which is based on George Washington's coat of arms -- along 16th Street and named the corner by the church, “Black Lives Matter Plaza.”
In the postponed case, Oracle is fighting a Federal Claims ruling that the company wasn't harmed by any errors the Pentagon made in developing the contract proposal or by any conflict of interest with Amazon.com Inc. because it wouldn't have qualified for the contract anyway.
The case, and a separate one brought by Amazon, are the latest in a series of legal and political challenges to the cloud-computing project, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, contract. The project, which is worth as much as $10 billion over a decade, is designed to allow the Pentagon to consolidate its technology programs and quickly move information to war-fighters around the world.
The case is Oracle America Inc. v. U.S., 19-2326, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Washington). Amazon's bid protest is Amazon Web Services Inc. v USA, 19-01796, U.S. Court of Federal Claims (Washington).
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