According to a bare majority, whether the supervisor’s conduct actually violated state law was not dispositive, because the WPA protects employees who report actual and suspected violations of the law. Because the assistant county prosecutor presented sufficient evidence to create a question of fact that she suspected that her supervisor violated the law, the Court reversed the lower court’s dismissal of her WPA claim.
In her partial dissent, Chief Justice Elizabeth T. Clement wrote that, whereas the WPA protects a report of a violation or a suspected violation of a law, it does not protect reporting a suspected violation of a suspected law. Chief Justice Clement explained, “In other words, while the statute accepts uncertainty—a violation need only be suspected to be reportable and protected—this should be construed as factual uncertainty, not legal uncertainty.” Accordingly, Chief Justice Clement stated that the Court’s ruling will “allow plaintiffs to receive protection for reporting violations of imaginary laws,” something that the Court had never held before and expressly declined to so hold in a 2010 decision.
Janetsky is reflective of a growing and noticeable trend to enhance legal protections for whistleblowers. As we previously reported here and here, many states have in the past year dramatically expanded whistleblower protections through legislation which not only cover a broader array of conduct, about which a would-be whistleblower can complain, but also...
Police have launched an investigation into alleged false accusation by Park Cheol-min, a former member of the Seongnam International Mafia. Park, ahead of the 2022 presidential election, raised al...