House Discusses Supreme Court Ruling on Whistle-Blower Protections

Partner Bryan House is quoted in a Society for Human Resource Management article, “Whistle-Blowers Must Report to SEC for Dodd-Frank Retaliation Protection,” about the U.S. Supreme Court’s Feb. 21 ruling that whistle-blower protections under the Dodd-Frank Act do not cover fired employees who do not report alleged securities law violations to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“All of the justices agreed that the statute’s ‘whistle-blower’ definition is clear and that ends the case,” House said of the decision.

House also said that there has never been any real question about the literal reading of the ‘whistle-blower’ definition in the statute, but that lower courts have “struggled with ‘tension’ between different parts of the statute.”