Landmark Lawsuit Filed Against SEC
to Protect Future Whistleblowers
and Main Street Investors

At the end of the Trump administration, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission inserted a poison pill into its wildly successful SEC Whistleblower Program. The Commission adopted new whistleblower program rules that simultaneously violate the law, break faith with current whistleblowers, and discourage future high-level reports.

Jordan Thomas, the chair of our Whistleblower Representation Practice and a former SEC Assistant Director in the Enforcement Division, has brought an unprecedented lawsuit to force the SEC to reverse its self-destructive rulemaking. At the time of filing, he stated “I love the SEC and do not bring this lawsuit lightly. I am proud to have had a leadership role in developing the SEC Whistleblower Program and couldn’t quietly standby as the potential of the program was undermined from within.”

Whistleblowers have been one of the few bright spots in a landscape of financial oversight that has suffered from the dreadful three Ds: deregulation, depenalization and desupervision. SEC whistleblowers have provided invaluable assistance to the Commission in detecting, investigating and prosecuting securities violations.

To date, the successful SEC Whistleblower Program has received more than 40,000 whistleblower submissions, launched over 1,000 investigations, returned over $850 million to injured investors, and sanctioned wrongdoers more than $3 billion. The whistleblowers who enabled these recoveries earned more than $500 million.

Our courts can overturn this recent ill-advised rulemaking – which is the point of our lawsuit, the first step toward ensuring that Wall Street helps to rebuild Main Street, rather than damage it.

Join us in policing Wall Street before it’s too late.