The Scope Of Whistleblower Protections Under Sarbanes-Oxley: Are Privately Held Companies Covered? – Part I

Federal courts, administrative law judges, plus practitioners and corporations are all still coping with the fallout of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, 18 U.S.C. § 1514 et seq. (“SOX” or the Act”). Enacted in the wake of the Enron and Arthur Andersen scandals, SOX is primarily about financial controls and transparency requirements for publicly traded companies. Yet the Act has broad ramifications for employment attorneys and human resource professionals, among other reasons because the Act’s whistleblower provisions – SOX Section 806 (codified at 18 U.S.C. 1514A) – are in the nature of antidiscrimination employment law provisions. Moreover, Congress placed enforcement responsibilities for those provisions in the hands of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), an agency better known to employment attorneys than to corporate lawyers.