Following Congress’ enactment last summer of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Pub. L. 111-203, 124 Stat. 1376, employers have sought guidance on how Dodd-Frank’s whistleblower protections will affect the workplace. The Dodd-Frank Act—which touches virtually every area of the U.S. financial system—contains many new rules and standards designed to encourage whistleblowers to report alleged misconduct, while protecting employee whistleblowers from retaliation by their employer. Some of these provisions create new incentives and protections for employees, and some merely clarify or expand upon the requirements of existing laws.

Foremost among Dodd-Frank’s whistleblower provisions is a new “bounty” system, which enables whistleblowers to seek monetary rewards by reporting violations of federal securities and commodity laws to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). While this reward program has attracted the most media attention, Dodd-Frank also contains strong anti-retaliation provisions that may make employers more vulnerable to retaliation claims, and increase the cost of litigating those claims when they arise. These provisions broaden the whistleblower protections of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), create whistleblower protection for employees of financial services companies, and broaden and clarify the whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act (FCA).

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