A whistleblower claiming unlawful retaliation under the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act need not show that the employer acted with retaliatory intent to establish a valid claim, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled February 8, 2024. Instead, a plaintiff need show only that the protected activity was a contributing factor to the adverse action. The burden then shifts back to the employer to prove that it would have taken the same action regardless of the whistleblower’s protected activity. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Murray v. UBS Securities resolves a split between the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Fifth and Ninth Circuits.
The case arose when Trevor Murray, then a research strategist at UBS who wrote reports about the firm’s securities business, alleged that the company fired him shortly after he told his supervisors that two of the company’s trading desk leaders were trying to influence his independent reporting. The company said that business losses required them to eliminate some jobs, including Murray’s.