{"id":9798,"date":"2026-02-10T03:41:45","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T03:41:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/second-circuit-confirms-whistleblower-activity-must-have-causal-relationship-with-termination-decision-for-sarbanes-oxley-retaliation-claims\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T03:41:45","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T03:41:45","slug":"second-circuit-confirms-whistleblower-activity-must-have-causal-relationship-with-termination-decision-for-sarbanes-oxley-retaliation-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/second-circuit-confirms-whistleblower-activity-must-have-causal-relationship-with-termination-decision-for-sarbanes-oxley-retaliation-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"Second Circuit Confirms Whistleblower Activity Must Have Causal Relationship With Termination Decision For Sarbanes-Oxley Retaliation Claims"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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On February 10, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a decision in Murray <\/em>v. UBS Securities, LLC <\/em>finding that, for Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower retaliation claims, a whistleblower\u2019s activity must \u201cactually<\/em> cause or help cause the termination decision.\u201d The decision clarifies the standard applicable to Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower retaliation claims after the Supreme Court decided last year that a whistleblower need not prove that an employer acted with \u201cretaliatory intent,\u201d as we discussed in our prior blog post.<\/p>\n

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The Sarbanes-Oxley Act prohibits employers from, among other things, \u201cdiscriminat[ing] against an employee in the terms and conditions of employment because of\u201d protected whistleblowing activity. The statute sets out a burden shifting framework in which a plaintiff must first show that their whistleblowing activity was a \u201ccontributing factor\u201d in an adverse employment action taken against them. If the plaintiff makes that showing, the burden then shifts to the defendant to show by \u201cclear and convincing evidence\u201d that it would have taken the adverse action anyway.<\/p>\n

In February 2024, the Supreme Court held in Murray<\/em> that nothing in the text of the Sarbanes-Oxley statute required showing that the employer acted with \u201cretaliatory intent,\u201d reversing an earlier decision by the Second Circuit. Instead, the Supreme Court explained that a \u201cplaintiff\u2019s burden on intent is simply to show\u201d that the whistleblowing activity was a \u201ccontributing factor in the unfavorable personnel action.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court\u2019s decision, however, left unaddressed UBS\u2019s objection to the trial court\u2019s jury instruction that defined a \u201ccontributing factor\u201d as something that \u201ctended to affect in any way\u201d the termination decision. UBS argued that the instruction was overbroad because it allowed the jury to consider effects that did not contribute to Mr. Murray\u2019s termination. The Second Circuit agreed, writing, \u201cThe district court\u2019s instruction conflicted with the statutory text. Whistleblowing may \u2018tend to affect\u2019 termination generally, without actually being partly responsible for a particular<\/em> plaintiff\u2019s termination.\u201d Instead, the Second Circuit wrote that a \u201ccontributing factor\u201d \u201cmust actually<\/em> cause or help cause the termination decision\u2014it is not enough merely to influence the termination, or generally to be the type of thing that tends to cause termination.\u201d The court vacated the trial court\u2019s judgment in favor of Mr. Murray, and remanded the case for further proceedings.<\/p>\n

The Second Circuit\u2019s decision clarifies the causation element of a Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower retaliation claim. Although a showing of animus, or \u201cretaliatory intent,\u201d is not required, the Second Circuit has now confirmed that \u201c[a] termination is not because of<\/em> whistleblowing just because whistleblowing has a propensity<\/em> to lead to termination,\u201d and instead \u201cmust have actually been at least \u2018partly responsible for\u2019 the adverse employment action.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Find more Blog posts about litigation and regulatory developments that affect the workplace\u00a0here.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On February 10, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a decision in Murray v. UBS Securities, LLC finding that, for Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower retaliation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1266,7447,610,300,4856,1521,3415,619,7448,1954,997],"class_list":["post-9798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-activity","tag-causal","tag-circuit","tag-claims","tag-confirms","tag-decision","tag-relationship","tag-retaliation","tag-sarbanesoxley","tag-termination","tag-whistleblower"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}