On June 28, 2012, a Texas District Court held that the Dodd-Frank’s anti-retaliation provision per se does not apply extraterritorially. In Asadi v. G.E. Energy (USA), LLC, Case No. 4:12-cv-00345 (S.D. Tex. June 28, 2012), the district court determined that Dodd-Frank’s anti-retaliation provision did not extend to or protect the plaintiff’s extraterritorial whistleblowing activity. Note that this decision does not apply to Dodd-Frank’s whistleblower bounty provisions, pursuant to which whistleblowers outside of the U.S. may be eligible for bounties for making reports of violations to the SEC.
The complaint alleged that Asadi was a U.S.-based employee who was working from an office in Jordan to secure and manage energy contracts with the Iraqi government. Asadi alleged that he notified his supervisors and a company ombudsperson of a potential violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”), whereupon GE Energy pressured him to step down, attempted to negotiate a severance, and eventually terminated his employment.
Applying the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Morrison v. National Australia Bank, Ltd., 130 S. Ct. 2869 (2010), the district court held that the absence of language regarding the extraterritoriality of Dodd-Frank’s anti-retaliation provision led to a presumption that it did not apply extraterritorially. The district court noted that Section 929P(b) of Dodd-Frank gave extraterritorial jurisdiction over specific enforcement actions brought by the SEC or the DOJ, but not to private actions such as the plaintiff’s. The district court also found persuasive a Department of Labor Administrative Review Board en banc holding that, because Dodd Frank’s amendments to SOX were silent as to extraterritoriality, the amendments could not be construed to extend the reach of SOX extraterritorially. See Villanueva v. Core Labs, NV, 2001 WL 6981989, ARB Case No. 09-108, ALJ Case No. 2009-SOX-6 (ARB Dec. 22, 2011). Thus, the district court concluded that Dodd-Frank’s anti-retaliation provision did not protect Asadi from alleged retaliation and granted GE Energy’s motion to dismiss.
