Can an employer retaliate against an employee for disclosing confidential information?

Section 1514A of Title 18 is intended to "protect[] employees when they take lawful acts to disclose information or otherwise assist in detecting and stopping actions which they reasonably believe to be fraudulent." Bechtel v. Admin. Review Bd., 710 F.3d 443, 446 (2d Cir. 2013) (internal quotation marks and ellipsis omitted). The statute specifically provides that a publicly traded company cannot "discharge, demote, suspend, threaten, harass, or in any other manner discriminate against an employee in the terms and conditions of employment" because the employee:

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18 U.S.C. 1514A(a)(1).

To prevail on a claim for retaliation under 1514A, a plaintiff must demonstrate that "(1) he or she engaged in a protected activity; (2) the employer knew that he or she engaged in the protected activity; (3) he or she suffered an unfavorable personnel action; and (4) the protected activity was a contributing factor in the unfavorable action." Nielsen v. AECOM Tech. Corp., 762 F.3d 214, 219 (2d Cir. 2014)). "[R]elief pursuant to 1514A turns on the reasonableness of the employee's belief that the conduct violated one of the enumerated provisions" of the statute. Id. at 221. "A reasonable belief contains both subjective and objective components," id. at 221, and "cannot exist wholly untethered from [the] specific [enumerated] provisions." Id. at n.6. "That is to say, a plaintiff must show not only that he believed that the conduct constituted a violation, but also that a reasonable person in his position would have believed that the conduct constituted a violation," id. (internal quotation marks omitted), of one of the enumerated provisions.