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Supreme Court Declines To Broaden Whistleblower Protections (reuters.com)
The U.S. Supreme Court this week refused to broaden protections for corporate insiders who call out misconduct, ruling they must take claims of wrongdoing to the Securities and Exchange Commission in order to be shielded against retaliation. From a report: The justices ruled 9-0 in favor of Digital Realty Trust, throwing out a lawsuit brought against the California-based real estate trust by a fired former employee who had reported alleged wrongdoing only internally and not to the SEC. The 2010 Wall Street reform law known as the Dodd-Frank Act is unambiguous in offering no protection from retaliation such as firing or demotion to employees who report claims of securities law violations only in-house, the court ruled.
9-0 vote shows how Trump has stacked the court. He should've never appointed that batty ginsburg.
...unless the perpetrator is rich and white, then it's "snitches get stitches!"
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Good to know, report it quickly to the SEC if you want whisleblower protections. And if you wait until your fired, you prob won't be protected.
Maybe this will make people report the crimes quicker.
yeah, get rid of dodd-frank and re-instate glass-stengall
corruption is through to the core
whistle-blowers should NOT be able to be retaliated agains. No commoner would have the common knowledge to whistle-blow to the SEC. Furthermore, how will the SEC protect the individual, or compensate them for being terminated?
This is a person acting for the best interest of the company AND THE SHAREHOLDERS by reporting corruption internally.
This person should deserve protections.
Report it quickly to the SEC if you want the SOX whistleblower protection. If you wait on reporting it, you may not get whistleblower protections for waiting too long.
Maybe this will make people report crimes quicker and not wait until they are fired for a lawsuit, screwing over investors.
https://www.sec.gov/whistleblo...
I hate the result, but the result is correct: if the law as written protects specifically people who report misconduct to the SEC, then the way the law is written is the way it should be interpreted.
I understand that it would be nice to protect people who report wrongdoing to their own company, but if that's not what the law says, the courts should not be allowed to pretend it does because "it would be nice if it had said that."
I'm baffled, however, as to why Anonymous Coward says "it shows Dodd Frank needs to go." It shows nothing of the sort. Dodd Frank gives the public a tiny bit of oversight over banks gambling with consumer's money and expecting to pocket the profit if they win and get bailed out by the public when they lose. If by "needs to go", Anonymous Coward means "needs to go further," then ok, maybe.
If you want this included in the law, talk to your representatives to change it.
Stuff isn't illegal if it isn't illegal. This is actually a good principle.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Happiness is slavery is all any Amerikuk can hope for. Bigly.
but it also shows why Dodd-Frank needs to go. It was a reactionary bit of legislation by the Dems that really isn't needed anymore
Bullshit.
None of the problems that caused the financial meltdown have been fixed.
Because even if all the Wall Street bankers have become saints since '08 (Ahahahaha, I kill me!), along will come some 26 year-old newly minted Harvard MBA who figures out that if he just bends the rules a little, he'll get his $10 million bonus at the end of the year. And he does so.
The other MBAs see it and THEY bend the rules. And with everybody bending rules, they'll have to bend them more to make their 8 figure bonuses.
Rinse. Repeat and it's 2008 all over again.
AND The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the greatest thing our government has done in 80 years. Because without it, the banks will be running all over us, screwing us and we won't have any recourse. Yeah, you're gonna spend the $3,000 retainer on a lawyer to fight the bank's wrongful collections of $1,500 against you because they sold and bought your mortgage and lost track of the last year's payments you made in good faith? Good luck with that.
And these days with the mandatory binding arbitration with panels filled with industry insiders, we little people have no chance.
And lastly, EVERYTHING you heard about the CFPB being bad for business and the economy is propaganda from the banks - like that asshole Jaime Dimon CEO at JP Morgan Chase. And the Republicans.
Every bank that has been fined by the CFPB deserved it. Period - end of story.
As part of the incentive for whistleblowers to come forward, Dodd-Frank's bounty provisions award 10-30% of the money recovered from a securities violation to the whistleblower that first reported the violation to the SEC, for sanctions of $1 million or more.
If the employee doesn't think the situation is clear-cut enough to have a shot at cashing in on that bounty and yet chooses to raise it internally in the company, there's no reason the government should be in the position of protecting their job. To do otherwise would at the very least create a perverse incentive for employees to try to blackmail their employers over conduct they know or suspect isn't really a SEC violation but will cost the company a lot of time and money to defend to reach that result.
This was actually the worst ruling the private sector could get. Now it is explicit that a corporation cannot rely on its employees to in any way report errors or criminal activity by other employees to get in front of an SEC violation. Think that through for a moment. There is now a disincentive for internal reporting. If I was an owner or board member of any kind of financial institution, I would be pissed! Why it's bad for workers seems obvious.
The headline is misleading -- it was Congress that wrote the law, where the term "whistleblower" is specifically defined to only include those who report misconduct to the SEC. The Supreme Court simply confirmed that we are governed by the law as written.
Note that elsewhere in Dodd–Frank (in the part dealing with reporting to the CFPB) and in Sorbanes–Oxley whistleblowers are defined differently, so that even those that only report misconduct internally are protected.
Why did the Supreme Court have to bother with this, instead of the matter ending at the very bottom of the judicial "food chain"?
Maybe, the law is deficient in this regard — not surprising, considering the majority of lawmakers in 2010 — but the courts don't write laws, they only interpret, what Congress has written.
Meh...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Agreed, while I'm generally loathe suggesting more regulation, it seems like Congress should mandate a formal process for internal whistle blowing be set up.
It shows that Dodd-Frank wasn't enough. It needs to be strengthened and expanded.
Because AC is just ideologically opposed to Dodd-Frank. Not because of what was in it, but because of who passed it.
There is a monetary reward for those who report SEC violations if the violations are ultimately proved true and defendants are convicted. The person reporting the violation is entitled to a percentage of the total amount of money involved with the reported violation. We are talking about millions of dollars. There have been people convicted of violating SEC laws and sent to prison who have reported unrelated crimes to the SEC and rewarded with millions.
Only one branch of the government gets to write laws and the SCOTUS isn't in it.
This was actually the worst ruling the private sector could get. Now it is explicit that a corporation cannot rely on its employees to in any way report errors or criminal activity by other employees to get in front of an SEC violation. Think that through for a moment. There is now a disincentive for internal reporting. If I was an owner or board member of any kind of financial institution, I would be pissed! Why it's bad for workers seems obvious.
Any company that is really interested in having employees report suspected violations internally should set up a way for that to happen anonymously. Every publicly-traded company I've ever worked for has provided that.
Become self-incorporated. Have a problem with me, take it to the SEC bitches! Hah! whatchagonnadoboutit??!
Maybe this will make people report the crimes quicker.
It also gives people an incentive to report quicker so that they are reporting, and not being reported on. When federal prosecutors cut a deal, they usually offer it to the first person to rat out their co-conspirators. If you are at the back of the line you are much more likely to go to jail, even if you are willing to cooperate.
I once listed to a talk by a DOJ prosecutor. He said that when a price-fixing/insider-trading/fraud scheme falls apart, they will sometimes get calls from participants within minutes of each other.
Considering that the Dodd-Frank bill is named for Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, it is hard for me to believe it does anything useful for anyone other than the banks.
Those two men were the staunchest opponents of doing anything to fix the problems in the financial markets before the 2008 meltdown. Both profited handsomely from that opposition.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
... is mostly a waste of time despite the indoctrination that corporate training tells you. Going to HR to complain about an abusive boss? Don't bother talking to HR. They're there to stick up for management at all costs. All you've done is give the employer a reason to create a file about you and your trouble-making that will be brought out as Exhibit A during your termination. C-level execs making illegal stock trades? Forget about going to the "ethics" board. Oh, sure, the corporate manual says you're supposed to report this or that to an appropriate body within the company but that accomplishes nothing in getting the behavior corrected.
Don't blame the ruling, blame the companies that put profit over ethics. If a company actually rewarded employees for whistleblowing, instead of punishing them by firing them, then the company should not be worried about the fiscal incentive to report to the SEC instead of internally. A company willing to fire an employee rather than fix internal criminal activity isn't worried about the incentive effect of it's behavior on other companies' employees.
As another poster commented, most companies have internal anonymous tip lines, to ensure an employee isn't retaliated against. An employee seeking to be rewarded may go directly to the SEC, but that reward is predicated on the company being found guilty of illegal actions that were reported. That is a long time to wait for a reward. Even with whistleblower protection in that case, things won't be pleasant for the whistleblower at that company.
Company retaliation is despicable, but if an employee reports criminal activity internally, how can the SEC know a dismissed employee was a whistleblower who was retaliated against? The SEC still knows nothing about the activity or who reported it.
DMCA - Chilling free speech since 1998.
Whether or not one's superiors are breaking the law, "outing" them is a gross violation of propriety.
Respect for members of a higher caste is a holy law that supersedes mundane laws. Uppity people who dare to make accusations of their betters deserve to be punished.
Harshly.
So, naturally, a court full of upper classers is going to decline expanding protections for rabble that break the holy laws.
my Rep couldn't possibly care less what I think about Whistle blower protections.
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Considering that the Dodd-Frank bill is named for Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, it is hard for me to believe
Why should we care whether something is it hard for you to believe?
What the Dodd Frank act does is of interest. What you do or don't believe is not.
I assume, however, assume from what you post that you think that the problem with Dodd Frank is that it does not go far enough in protecting the public, and thus that you hold the opposite opinion from that of the original anonymous coward.
This was actually the worst ruling the private sector could get. Now it is explicit that a corporation cannot rely on its employees to in any way report errors or criminal activity by other employees to get in front of an SEC violation. Think that through for a moment. There is now a disincentive for internal reporting. If I was an owner or board member of any kind of financial institution, I would be pissed! Why it's bad for workers seems obvious.
This cuts both ways.
An employee cannot leave a company and *say* that the company is in violation, they have to back it up with actual charges.
There's been too many "guilt by accusation" cases recently, and while many accused admitted to the crime, some did not.
Take for example [White House Aide] Rob Porter accused of domestic abuse, which he denies. His wife posted a photo of herself with a black eye to the newspapers, but didn't go to the police. A black eye should be a slam-dunk for domestic abuse and restraining order and yet... she didn't do that at the time with photographic evidence?
Take also for example Senator Al Franken, who used to be a professional comedian and was accused of making women feel "uncomfortable", but whose image was clearly a staged comedic incident completely in line with what many other comedians do. And making someone "feel uncomfortable" is not the same as assault, battery, or rape.
A third example is Judge Roy Moore: after the election, his accusers seem to have vanished like footprints in the sand.
We shouldn't have "mere accusations" lead us to pronounce someone guilty, because if we do that the process will be abused.
This ruling is completely responsible, because it can respond to abuse with false report charges.
It seems to me that the SEC could just set up a website where employees can submit a complaint in encrypted form. The employee can then report internally. If there is retaliation, the employee submits the encryption key to the SEC. Problem solved!
This was actually the worst ruling the private sector could get. Now it is explicit that a corporation cannot rely on its employees to in any way report errors or criminal activity by other employees to get in front of an SEC violation.
So what? They don't care. They would like to destroy every small business if possible, because it's easier to "regulate" a handful of corporations (which get to walk off with all the profits) than a soup of small mom-and-pop businesses. Gentrification works at all levels.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Sometimes anonymous isn't so anonymous. If nothing else, it could go like this: "Hmmm, who had access to this info and would likely report it? Gotcha!"
If you are an agency employee and you observe wrongdoing, raising your grievance internally is not sufficient - you must report it to the authorities, aka the citizens of the country.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
There is a monetary reward for those who report SEC violations if the violations are ultimately proved true and defendants are convicted.
citation
WTB [sig], PST!!!
Good to know, report it quickly to the SEC if you want whisleblower protections.
Hell, just always report any such behavior internally via email, creating a paper trail, and BCC it to the SEC to get whistleblower protection.
Ever notice the lack of watch-dog agencies in the USA? First, the important ones, the EPA, FTC, FCC, get fucked-over everytime the Republicans gain power. Second, most US laws declare that to avoid being labelled a criminal (by association), you must report criminal behaviour to ... your boss. That doesn't work so well in sexual harassment cases. So, what does one do when your boss and his boss, demand criminal behaviour? Record that you've done your patriotic duty and obey orders. Snitch, as Edward Snowden did. Follow your principles, quit the job and hope there's another one waiting. Those three, seem to be the only answers. The last two, with the employee making a difference, don't have a happy ending for the employee.
To say that the Dodd-Frank law does not go far enough in protecting the public suggests that it goes SOMEWHERE in protecting the public. Since the purpose of the law was to protect the political class and their cronies, anything it does which protects the public is by accident. I believe the public would be better off without the Dodd-Frank law (although this case does not make that argument one way or the other).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison