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As someone who has tried more than his share of cases, I have come to the conclusion that retaliation claims are often more difficult to defend than plain discrimination claims.

The new Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) emergency temporary standard mandating various COVID-19 policies and procedures for employers with at least 100 employees (“ETS”) has an uncertain future in light of recent legal challenges.

As discussed in our recent blog post, the Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act of 2019 (“CAARA”) was, earlier this year, assigned for implementation to Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (“OSHA”) Whistleblower Protection program.

The recent Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act (CAARA), to be enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”), offers protection from retaliation for antitrust whistleblowers who come forward to report possible criminal violations internally or directly to government authorities.

At this point, most employers probably know that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) is charged with investigating far more than workplace safety. Indeed, OSHA has a robust Whistleblower Protection Program that oversees worker retaliation complaints pursuant to over 20 different federal whistleblower laws.

Update: On January 1, 2021, the Senate voted to override President Trump’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 (“NDAA”).

On October 22, 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC” or “Commission”) announced a $114 million whistleblower award—by far the largest amount ever awarded and more than doubling the previous record of nearly $50 million.^[1]

Dodd-Frank created the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (the “SEC” or “Commission”) whistleblower program, which allows the SEC to issue awards to eligible whistleblowers who provide original information that leads to successful enforcement actions with total monetary sanctions above $1 million.¹

General Counsel and in-house legal departments have long struggled with articulating the risk of and determining the appropriate response to breaches of the company network and the potential exposure of confidential information about employees and third parties. It’s rarely a simple question.