What is a SAM.gov exclusion?

An exact UEI match is the strongest identity path. An exact CAGE match is compared with available registry UEI, legal-name, state, and country fields; contradictions require review. Individuals and some organizations may have no UEI or CAGE code, so name candidate discovery remains necessary.

A name-only result is a potential match, not an automatic identity match. The recorded normalizer handles specified Unicode, case, punctuation, legal-suffix, DBA, and whitespace differences. Compare the classification, location, agency, and other available fields. The result must retain the source date because it describes what the exclusions data reported at that time.

For a nonprocurement covered transaction, 2 CFR 180.300 requires a participant to verify that the person at the next lower tier is not excluded or disqualified. The rule permits checking SAM.gov Exclusions, collecting a certification, or adding a clause or condition to the covered transaction.

Pass-through entities have a specific duty under 2 CFR 200.332(a) to verify that a subrecipient is not excluded or disqualified. Vendors are subject to the 2 CFR 180.300 duty only when the vendor transaction is a covered transaction. The transaction type matters.

Procurement rules use a separate framework. FAR 9.405-2 prohibits certain subcontracts above $45,000 with a contractor that has an active exclusion record unless there is a compelling reason. The rule contains a commercially available off-the-shelf item exception and different application details by contract and tier.

FAR 52.209-6 requires written subcontractor disclosure and contracting-officer notice in the circumstances covered by the clause. The applicable contract, clause, subcontract value, and item type determine the duty.

A check can document whether the searched UEI matched exactly or whether the CAGE code or normalized name surfaced active exclusion candidates in a particular source extract. It cannot establish what the list reported before the source's date or after the check, and non-UEI candidates require review.

The defensible result is dated: no active exclusion record matched, a potential match requires review, or the searched UEI matched an active record. It is evidence of the check, not a legal conclusion about every transaction.

federal.contractors retrieves the official public SAM.gov Exclusions extract daily, archives it before inspection, and activates it only after member, schema, row-quality, and population checks pass. Each exclusion check records the query, identity state, candidate basis, field agreements and contradictions, candidate total and truncation, matching and normalization versions, source artifact, source as-of and retrieval times, accepted and invalid row counts, source hash, check time, and a seal over the resulting verification record.