SAN FRANCISCO — Taking sides on an issue that has already yielded a circuit split, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Wednesday found that the whistleblower provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act apply to employees who raise concerns about potentially unlawful activity internally, not just those who make reports directly to regulators.
The decision in Somers v. Digital Realty Trust falls in line with an earlier Second Circuit ruling that found that Congress didn’t intend to limit protections to those who disclose information to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Fifth Circuit, the first court to weigh in on the matter, ruled in 2013 that the language of the Dodd-Frank statute limits the definition of the term “whistleblower” to those reporting alleged securities violations “to the commission.” In a decision earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit dodged the question.
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