In this time of economic uncertainty, when blowing the whistle on an employer’s wrongdoing may seem especially risky, a recent Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision offers support to those willing to take that risk. In Ziparo v. CSX Transportation, Inc., decided November 25, 2025, the court overturned Circuit precedent to harmonize the Circuit with the Supreme Court’s whistleblower-friendly ruling in Murray v. UBS Securities, underscoring the necessity of broad anti-retaliation protections for workers in industries that impact public safety.
Cody Ziparo worked as a freight train conductor for CSX Transportation from 2006 until his termination in 2016. In his court filings, he alleged that starting in 2016, his supervisors pressured him to fraudulently inflate his productivity reports to pad their own bonuses. Ziparo refused, first informally but later through CSX’s ethics hotline. He also asserted that his supervisors were creating an unsafe work environment by exacting such punishing pressure on him that he could not focus on his work.
About a month after Ziparo filed his formal complaint, he made a potentially life-threatening mistake on the job: he failed to properly reset a train switch, which could have resulted in derailing an oncoming train. CSX terminated him for this safety violation, claiming that the seriousness of his mistake merited termination, which was distinct from his whistleblowing. However, Ziparo countered that...
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