Lawson v. FMR LLC: A Close Look at the Whistleblowers’ Opening Salvo in the Supreme Court
As we’ve covered here and here, the Supreme Court will decide this term whether a whistleblower can pursue a Sarbanes-Oxley claim for retaliation by a privately-owned employer. Jackie Lawson and Jonathan Zang, former employees of Fidelity investment advisory companies, say yes. The First Circuit said no.
Lawson and Zang have now filed their opening brief in their attempt to persuade the Supreme Court to disagree with the First Circuit and reinstate their claim. And they have even included a non-gratuitous George Clooney reference. (Hat tip to scotusblog.com for making this and numerous other Supreme Court resources available.)
Lawson and Zang’s argument involves the interpretation of 18 U.S.C. § 1514A, the provision of Sarbanes-Oxley that allows whistleblower claims. They argue that the plain language of Section 1514A applies to protect not only employees of publicly traded companies and mutual funds, but also employees of contractors of those companies, such as the Fidelity investment advisers at issue in their case. The statute bars contractors from retaliating against an “employee”: Lawson and Zang contend that this should be read to refer to those contractors’ “own employees,” in addition to the employees of public companies with whom the contractors work. Br. at 15. They argue that it wouldn’t make any sense to only prohibit retaliation by contractors against others’ employees, since it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for a contractor to terminate someone else’s employee. Br. at 22.