{"id":404,"date":"2014-06-02T21:35:26","date_gmt":"2014-06-02T21:35:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/discriminationandsexualharassmentlawyers.com\/?p=404"},"modified":"2014-06-02T21:35:26","modified_gmt":"2014-06-02T21:35:26","slug":"u-s-supreme-court-expands-anti-retaliation-protection-of-sarbanes-oxley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.discriminationandsexualharassmentlawyers.com\/es\/u-s-supreme-court-expands-anti-retaliation-protection-of-sarbanes-oxley\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Supreme Court Expands Anti-Retaliation Protection of Sarbanes-Oxley"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> <\/span><i>Lawson v. FMR LLC<\/i><i>,<\/i><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> <\/span>the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Court of Appeals ruling that the whistleblower protections of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (\u201cSOX\u201d) only applied to employees of public companies, not those of contractors. SOX established anti-retaliation provisions for whistleblowers by prohibiting public companies or contractors from retaliating against an employee due to protected activity.<br \/>\nThe whistleblowers<i><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> <\/span><\/i>in<i><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> <\/span>Lawson<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> <\/span><\/i>worked for mutual fund advisers, rather than the public company mutual funds. The Administrative Review Board of the Department of Labor came to the opposite conclusion regarding whistleblowers in<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> <\/span><i>Spinner v. David Landau &amp; Assoc. LLC<\/i>, and held that a contractor\u2019s employee was protected by Sarbanes-Oxley.<br \/>\nThe Supreme Court<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.scotusblog.com\/2014\/03\/opinion-analysis-coverage-of-sox-whistleblower-protection-is-no-longer-up-in-the-aira\/\">reversed<\/a><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> <\/span>the Court of Appeals, ruling that the anti-retaliation protections of SOX also apply to the employees of a public company\u2019s contractor.<\/p>\n<ul style=\"font: 13px\/16px Calibri, Candara, Segoe, 'Segoe UI', Optima, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; color: #444444; text-transform: none; text-indent: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; word-spacing: 0px; white-space: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;\">\n<li>The defendant-employers urged the Court to adopt a narrow interpretation of the whistleblower protections, arguing that Congress only sought to prevent public companies from hiring an outside contractor to carry out improper retaliation.<\/li>\n<li>Writing for the majority, Justice Ginsburg reiterates that the goal of SOX is to \u2018<a href=\"http:\/\/www.scotusblog.com\/2014\/03\/opinion-analysis-coverage-of-sox-whistleblower-protection-is-no-longer-up-in-the-aira\/\">safeguard investors in public companies<\/a>.\u2019 Given the text and purpose of SOX, the Court found that it should protect employees of contractors of public companies, not just employees of public companies.<\/li>\n<li>The Court also explained that this is consistent with interpretations of the air-carrier whistleblower statute that SOX is based on, which covers employees of air carriers\u2019 contractors and subcontractors.<\/li>\n<li>The Court disagreed with the defendants\u2019 emphasis on the statute\u2019s caption, \u201cWhistleblower Protection for Employees of Publicly Traded Companies.\u201d  The majority explained that if a caption conflicts with \u2018numerous indicators\u2019 in the legislative text, the caption does not prevail. The dissent argued that since the SOX anti-retaliation provisions are ambiguous, greater weight should be placed on the statute\u2019s caption and title.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you have questions about whistleblower protections, contact a New York<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/discriminationandsexualharassmentlawyers.com\/employment-law\/wrongful-termination\/new-york-city\/\">attorney<\/a><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> <\/span>who is highly experienced in labor and employment law.<br \/>\n<span style=\"font: 13px\/16px Calibri, Candara, Segoe, 'Segoe UI', Optima, Arial, sans-serif; color: #444444; text-transform: none; text-indent: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; word-spacing: 0px; float: none; display: inline !important; white-space: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;\"> <\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Lawson v. FMR LLC, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Court of Appeals ruling that the whistleblower protections of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (\u201cSOX\u201d) only applied to employees of public companies, not those of contractors. SOX established anti-retaliation provisions for whistleblowers by prohibiting public companies or contractors from retaliating against an employee due &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/dev.discriminationandsexualharassmentlawyers.com\/es\/u-s-supreme-court-expands-anti-retaliation-protection-of-sarbanes-oxley\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;U.S. Supreme Court Expands Anti-Retaliation Protection of Sarbanes-Oxley&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,9,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-employment-law","category-new-jersey-lawyer","category-new-york-city-lawyer","category-philadelphia-lawyer"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.discriminationandsexualharassmentlawyers.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.discriminationandsexualharassmentlawyers.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.discriminationandsexualharassmentlawyers.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.discriminationandsexualharassmentlawyers.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.discriminationandsexualharassmentlawyers.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.discriminationandsexualharassmentlawyers.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.discriminationandsexualharassmentlawyers.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.discriminationandsexualharassmentlawyers.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.discriminationandsexualharassmentlawyers.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}