The New Jersey Supreme Court in Lippman v. Ethicon Inc. closed a possible loophole in the state’s Conscientious Employee Protection Act that would either have excluded or limited protection for employees whose job duties required warning of or limiting their employer’s illegal or dangerous actions. Courts had found that such employees were outside of the act’s protection or that the actions taken against them were subject to a heightened scrutiny standard.
The Supreme Court rejected both of these approaches, and found that the whistleblower law makes no differentiation between a watchdog employee and any other conscientious employee who may seek CEPA’s protection. In fact, where the regular duties of the employee requires blowing a whistle when the employer is going astray makes the employee all the more vulnerable to retaliation, and thus the purpose of the act would be thwarted if CEPA’s reach were limited, excluding the watchdogs.
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