SOX Protections Expanding for Whistleblowers

There seems to be a trend of interpreting SOX in a way that extends the whistleblower protections to a widening circle of persons. Most recently, a judge in Eastern District of Pennsylvania had allowed a retaliation lawsuit under SOX against non-publicly traded subsidiary of a publicly traded corporation to proceed after examining the agency relationship between the subsidiary and the parent in Wiest v. Lynch. The opinion relied heavily on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling in Lawson v. FMR LLC, which held that Section 806 covers “any officer, employee, contractor, subcontractor or agent of” a publicly held company.