Second Circuit Holds That Dodd-Frank Act Does Not Protect Whistleblower Outside U.S. Territory

Yesterday's post on the SEC's whistleblower program discussed among other topics the question of whether the Dodd-Frank Act protects employee whistleblowers from retaliation by their employers where the employees only raise alleged violations of the federal securities laws internally within their companies. Coincidentally, yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit also issued its opinion in Liu v. Siemens AG, one of the cases mentioned in that post. However, the court specifically declined to decide whether the plaintiff employee's internal reporting of alleged misconduct qualified him for whistleblower protection under the Dodd-Frank Act, one of the issues raised on appeal. Instead, the court focused on the question of whether Dodd-Frank's whistleblower protection applies outside U.S. territory. The court upheld the dismissal of the employee's suit on the ground that Dodd-Frank's whistleblower protection does not extend to a foreign worker employed