What is the test for a whistleblower protection claim under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act or the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act?

In Nielsen v. AECOM Technology Corporation, for example, on which the court in March v. Metro-North expressly relied, we held that a plaintiff pleading retaliation under the whistleblower protection provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, codified at 18 U.S.C. 1514A, "must show not only that he believed that the conduct [complained of] constituted a violation, but also that a reasonable person in his position would have believed that the conduct constituted a violation." Nielsen, 762 F.3d at 221 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). That conclusion, however, was firmly grounded in the text of 1514A, which protects employees who report conduct that "the employee reasonably believes constitutes a violation" of certain federal laws or regulations. 18 U.S.C. 1514A(a)(1) (emphasis added). Similarly, the district court here relied in part on our decision in Lenzi v. Systemax, Inc., 944 F.3d 97 (2d Cir. 2019), in which we held that the framework governing 1514A claims, including the objective reasonableness requirement explained in Nielsen, applied to claims under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act's whistleblower provision, codified at 15 U.S.C. 2087. We did so, however, because "[c]rucially . . . both statutes contain the requirement that the whistleblower 'reasonably believes' there is a violation." Lenzi, 944 F.3d at 114.