NT Lakis lawyers have filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in an important case regarding the scope of whistleblower retaliation protection under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act (Dodd-Frank).
Our brief in Digital Realty Trust, Inc. v. Somers, No. 16-1276 (U.S. Supreme Ct. brief filed August 31, 2017), urges the High Court to review and reverse a problematic ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals holding that Dodd-Frank’s anti-retaliation protections apply to individuals who fall outside the law’s clear definition of “whistleblower,” namely only those individuals who report alleged securities law violations by their employers directly to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
We argue that in holding that an employee who files only an internal complaint about a suspected securities law violation is nevertheless protected from retaliation under Dodd-Frank, the Ninth Circuit has impermissibly expanded the law’s protection beyond what Congress intended.
A copy of the brief is available here.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.