S.J. Amoroso Construction challenged the Army Corps of Engineers' interpretation of the Buy American Act (BAA) on a San Francisco commissary project. The court ruled that BAA compliance must be checked for each individual piece of material delivered to the site, not calculated as an overall average. Amoroso had to replace about one-third of its structural steel and pay for the extra compliance work. This decision matters because it means you cannot offset foreign materials with domestic ones—every single item must meet the domestic content requirement.
Check BAA compliance item-by-item, not as a project total. One non-compliant piece can trigger replacement costs.