While California courts have already granted employees with broad whistleblower protection for complaints based on any “reasonable belief” of a violation of law, courts have taken it a step further. Now, employees are given protection for complaints already known to the employer. This departs from prior case law.
The California Supreme Court, in People ex rel. Garcia-Brower v. Kolla’s Inc., reviewed prior case law defining what “disclosure” meant. The Court of Appeal, in Mize-Kurzman v. Marin Community College Dist., held that “disclosure” required new information (e.g., you cannot “disclose” something already known). We’ll save you the trouble—we agree with the Court of Appeal. Unfortunately for us, and for the Court of Appeal, the California Supreme Court disagreed. In doing so, it looked to the Oxford English Dictionary and Webster’s Dictionary definitions of “disclosure,” including “to make [something] openly known” and “open [something] up to general knowledge,” to hold that something already known can still be disclosed. While the California Supreme court acknowledged that “disclose” often refers to sharing previously unknown information, it did not carry the day.
In sum, the California Supreme Court held that a protected disclosure under Section 1102.5 encompasses reports or complaints of a violation made to an employer, even if the recipient already knows of the violation.
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