Category Archives: Employee Rights
SCOTUS Affirms Right to Blow Your Whistle in Public Sector
If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. — Louis Brandeis, Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court There has long been tension in the public sector regarding an employee’s duties as […]
A Brief History of the False Claims Act
Worse than traitors in arms are men who pretend loyalty to the flag, feast and fatten on the misfortunes of the nation while patriotic blood is crimsoning the plains of the South and their countrymen are moldering in the dust. — Abraham Lincoln, regarding the False Claims Act The False Claims Act (FCA) is one […]
Supreme Court to Take Up Kellogg Brown & Root Whistleblower Case
It’s impossible to understate the importance of strict adherence to procedure when initiating a qui tam action under the False Claims Act. Unfortunately under our legal system, otherwise meritorious claims can often be defeated merely because the proponent waited too long to act or otherwise failed to follow the rules. One such case recently reached […]
Illinois Municipality Concludes Probe on Hostile Work Environment
Blowing the whistle does not always need to involve fraud and malfeasance. Sometimes a culture of apathy allows a hostile work environment to develop that can only be addressed with outside intervention. Employees and managers who constantly witness pervasive discrimination and harassment in their workplaces often feel compelled to act, even if they are not […]
Public Sector Secrecy Rules Could Violate Federal Whistleblower Laws
Whistleblower laws are intended to discourage corruption by granting legal protection and sometimes even financial incentives to employees who report corruption and other violations. However, these laws can sometimes be at odds with the security requirements of certain sensitive facilities or the proprietary rights of contractors. While these concerns are sometimes understandable, there is a […]
SEC Rulings Remind Whistleblowers of the Importance of Procedure
You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for the bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing. — Thomas Sowell Proper procedures are of the utmost importance for whistleblowers seeking to gain legal protections and financial rewards for their disclosures. The mere fact that you provided information that saved the government millions of […]
DC Circuit Maintains Protections for Internal Investigations
Supposing is good, but finding out is better. ― Mark Twain Many of the privileges the law recognizes against the compelled disclosure of information exist in order to promote candor. For instance, attorney-client privilege exists because people must be able to remain open and honest with their legal counsel without fear that the substance of […]
Supreme Court Poised to Hear TSA Whistleblower Case
The Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) plays a crucial role in our national safety infrastructure. Yet the agency has been subjected to significant criticism — and even been the butt of jokes — for the last several years. In 2003, Air Marshal Robert MacLean went to the media to expose what he felt was a risky […]
Food Safety Whistleblower Regulations on the Way
Otto von Bismarck once said, “Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.” Fortunately, the government that makes the laws does want to see the sausage being made and, as such, has instituted new regulations that protect employees in various levels of the food industry from facing retaliation for reporting […]
Shady Record Keeping Not Just in the VA
The nation was recently stunned by the revelation that Department of Veterans Affairs administrators were manipulating dates on records to conceal the unreasonable wait times veterans seeking medical care were forced to endure. Unfortunately, this type of conduct may be more common throughout government than we could have imagined. The Texas Supreme Court has recently […]
