Katz, Marshall & Banks Partner Debra Katz appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered yesterday to discuss Carolyn Lerner, the new head of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (“OSC”).  Lerner has been a breath of fresh air for whistleblowers since she arrived at the OSC.  Just two weeks after arriving at the OSC, Lerner publicly [...]

MSPBWatch – a blog that works to “keep them honest” at the United States Merit Systems Protection Board – released a pair of helpful flowcharts this weekend that we wanted to make sure our readers didn’t miss.  The flowcharts – released in simplified and detailed form – explain the process through which a federal employee [...]

The Associated Press reported today that Government Accountability Project (“GAP”) client and Marine Corps whistleblower Franz Gayl –who is credited with getting Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (“MRAP”) vehicles delivered to American troops, which former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates claimed saved “thousands of lives” – received notice that his security clearance had been reinstated.  Gayl [...]

The United States Merit Systems Protection Board (“MSPB”) released a report today entitled “Blowing the Whistle: Barriers to Federal Employees Making Disclosures.”  In it, the MSPB compared two surveys of how federal employees felt about whistleblowing – one conducted in 1992 which surveyed over 13,000 federal employees, and one conducted in 2010 which surveyed over [...]

In a development in a case we blogged about last week, a second official at the vitrification plant for the nuclear site in Hanford, WA, has filed a complaint with the Department of Labor, reports Tacoma, Washington’s The News Tribune.  Donna Busche, the plant’s manager of environmental and nuclear safety, filed a complaint against her [...]

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote a powerful public rebuke to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday regarding the languorous pace with which his office was addressing two whistleblower cases brought against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”).  Jane Turner and Robert Kobus have had their cases, as Grassley describes it, “languish[ing] in bureaucratic red tape” [...]

Two former officials of the city of Miami are suing the city for retaliation after they were allegedly fired following their cooperation with investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, reports the Wall Street Journal today.  Michael Boudreaux, the former city budget director, and Victor Igwe, the longtime [...]

In what will hopefully be the final chapter in the story of whistleblower retaliation against two brave Texas nurses, the New York Times reported Monday that the doctor who retaliated against them pled guilty and was sentenced to 60 days in jail, a five year probation, and a $5,000 fine.  Dr. Rolando G. Arafiles, Jr., [...]

In a lawsuit announced Wednesday in Kennewick, Washington, Walt Tamosaitis – a whistleblower who has previously raised concerns about nuclear safety about a waste-treatment factory being built at the Hanford nuclear site in southeast Washington state – alleges that the U.S. Department of Energy took part in engineering his removal from the construction project after [...]

In a continuance of what appears to be an emerging pro-employee trend in Department of Labor whistleblower cases, on October 26, 2011, the Administrative Review Board  vacated an Administrative Law Judge’s  grant of a motion to dismiss in a case brought under the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982 (“STAA”), 49 U.S.C. § 31105.  The STAA [...]