Here in the Baltimore-Washington area, we’re trapped under a dome - a heat dome. Like the inside of my car on these 100-degree days, disputes involving executives are also heating up, as the latest in Suits by Suits news shows:
As we’ve previously covered here and here on Suits by Suits, a battle is raging in the federal courts over whether the new whistleblower protections in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 apply only to individuals who report misconduct to the SEC. But the fight, to this point, is as one-sided as Pickett’s Charge.
In a May 2013 decision, Judge Jesse Furman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York joined four other judges who have accepted employees’ expansive reading of the Act. Murray v. UBS Securities, LLC, No. 12-cv-5914 (May 21, 2013).
2013 has been a banner year for followers of the Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower protection provision, 18 U.S.C. § 1514A. As we’ve previously discussed on Suits by Suits, the Supreme Court will decide in its next term whether Sarbanes-Oxley protects employees of privately-owned corporations, in Lawson v. FMR, LLC. The Third Circuit also recently held, in Wiest v. Lynch, that an employee does not have to allege that he “definitively and specifically” reported a known legal violation in order to state a Sarbanes-Oxley claim.
Most recently, on Tuesday, the Tenth Circuit held that an employee is protected under Sarbanes-Oxley for reporting misconduct even when the misconduct does not involve a fraud against shareholders (Lockheed Martin Corp. v. Administrative Review Board, Department of Labor).
The facts of Lockheed involve tawdry letters, military affairs, and humiliation in the workplace.
Only a handful of employment cases make it all the way to the Supreme Court’s august chambers at One First Street. That’s largely because the Court has discretion whether or not to review cases decided by lower courts of appeals. Thousands of unhappy litigants file petitions for writ of certiorari every year, asking for review from the highest court in the land. Almost all are turned away.
Tomorrow, the Court will consider whether to accept an appeal by Jonathan Zang and Jackie Lawson in a case that has significant implications for the Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower protection provision, 18 U.S.C. § 1514A. Section 1514A, which was passed as a response to the Enron and other financial scandals of the early 2000s, prohibits public companies, as well as “any other officer, employee, contractor, subcontractor, or agent of such company,” from retaliating against “an employee” for protected activity. The issue in Zang and Lawson’s case is whether Section 1514A protects employees of privately-held companies, if those companies are working as contractors for public companies.
In the first part of this series, we raised the question of whether a public employee’s rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution – primarily the right to speak freely on public issues – is limited by the fact that she works for the government. It’s the curious mix of the Constitutional rights we all enjoy, and the duty of the government to act as an employer when it hires and manages people to get things done. We looked briefly at how the Supreme Court addressed this issue: in short summary, public employees keep their rights to free speech on issues of public concern – but when they are speaking as part of their official duties, or their speech creates a disruptive atmosphere for the government agency, the employee can be fired for speaking out.
Two recent cases dealing with deputy attorneys-general illustrate this difficult intersection between public employment and speech. In both cases, the attorneys – a breed not known for silence – lost their jobs for speech: one for speaking out, and the other for refusing to speak when she was told to do so. Let’s see how their cases against their public employers are faring.
Some days when I look over the possible stories here, they’re filled with disputes between attorneys. It almost makes me think that my fellow editors at Suits-by-Suits and me are the only attorneys that can get along. Most of the time, at least.
Because if you are, or have ever dealt with, Attornicus Americanus, then you know two things about our profession: 1) we don’t like to be told to be quiet when we have something important to say; and 2) even worse, though, is telling us we have to say something that we don’t want to say. The two cases at issue in this two-part series feature lawyers working for the government who were in just those situations, and were fired. We look at recent interesting developments in their claims for retaliation. In passing, too, we’ll note what one of these lawyers was fired for saying, and what the other lawyer was fired for refusing to say.
All in all, these are posts about whistleblowing and retaliation claims by public employees – and not just attorneys, either. The public nature of the employment here is important because government employees keep some of their First Amendment rights to free speech when they go to work for the government. The government employer, for its part, has some limited right to limit its employees’ speech in order to get its mission accomplished. So before we turn to the two cases, a brief tour through the First Amendment rights of public employees is in order.
Late last week, Rutgers announced that it reached a $475,000 settlement with former men’s basketball coach Mike Rice and that no cause for Rice’s termination would be provided. Recently-publicized videotapes show Rice at practices hitting, kicking and throwing basketballs at his players and taunting them with obscenities and anti-gay slurs (not to be confused with this shocking video of Middle Delaware State women’s basketball coach Sheila Kelly throwing toasters at her players). The announcement came more than two weeks after Rutgers President Robert Barchi told reporters that Rice was fired, but not for cause. And that announcement came several months after Rice was suspended from work for three days, following an internal investigation by outside counsel, resulting in this report.
Earlier this month, we blogged about an important decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Bechtel v. Administrative Review Board, a Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower case. In Bechtel, thecourt upheld the Department of Labor’s denial of a whistleblower claim, even though it found that the administrative law judge (“ALJ”) had applied the wrong legal standard.
So how did the ALJ get the law wrong?
To understand the ALJ’s error, it’s important to understand how the governing law defines the burden of proof in a Sarbanes-Oxley case.
Based on the statistics, it is nearly impossible to win a whistleblower claim brought under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In 2010, the Center for Public Integrity wrote that the U.S. Department of Labor, which administers those claims, had only upheld 25 out of the 1,091 claims brought since the Act was passed in 2002. That’s only a 2% success rate.
Although Scott Bechtel’s case took a longer path than most, it is now another statistic on the side of failure.
In Latin, it’s “Finis Coronat Opus”: the finish crowns the work. It’s a reminder that when you’re leaving a job, it’s important to exit with the same grace, charm, and respect for your colleagues and the business’s stakeholders that helped get you the job in the first place.
You can also talk about Battletoads, which Groupon’s CEO Andrew Mason did in a memo he sent to the company’s employees last Friday, shortly after he was fired by Groupon’s board.
You should, however, be careful what you say.
As the regulatory and business environments in which our clients operate grow increasingly complex, we identify and offer perspectives on significant legal developments affecting businesses, organizations, and individuals. Each post aims to address timely issues and trends by evaluating impactful decisions, sharing observations of key enforcement changes, or distilling best practices drawn from experience. InsightZS also features personal interest pieces about the impact of our legal work in our communities and about associate life at Zuckerman Spaeder.
Information provided on InsightZS should not be considered legal advice and expressed views are those of the authors alone. Readers should seek specific legal guidance before acting in any particular circumstance.
John J. Connolly
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