California cares about its workplace whistleblowers. Exactly four decades ago, state legislators enacted a law designed to protect employees who blew the whistle on their employers. Labor Code Section 1102.5 says that employers cannot prevent their employees from disclosing information to authorities when they believe that a rule or regulation is being or has been violated.

The law explicitly bars companies from retaliating against any employee whom they believe has made or is planning to make such a disclosure. But when it was drafted, the law failed to lay out a process that would enable whistleblowers to prove that they had been subject to retaliation by employers as a direct result of their actual or suspected whistleblowing activity. This was a big omission.