SEC Alert! Whistleblower Left Hanging: SEC Comissoners Hester Peirce & Mark Uyeda skirt duty, cite SEC overload of Rules Review. I am glad supporting whistleblowers is only something we can do when we are not busy... /s
https://www.sec.gov/news/statement/peirce-uyeda-murray-v-ubs-20230706
Wut Mean?
The Supreme Court is about to play ball with a case called Murray v. UBS Securities. This is about a guy (Murray) who blew the whistle on some sketchy stuff happening at UBS Securities, and then was shown the door.
Now, the Second Circuit Court (kinda like the semi-finals before the big Supreme Court championship) decided that to win a case like this, a whistleblower has to prove that the company fired them just because they had the guts to stand up and say something stank.
But here's where it gets hairy. The Commission (SEC) decided to join an amicus brief (basically, a "friend of the court" letter saying 'Hey Supreme Court, we think you should look at it this way'), supporting Murray. Some folks in the Commission (Hester and Mark) are not happy about this, saying they didn't get enough time or resources to properly consider it.
On top of this drama, there are also two big rule changes the Commission is reviewing, and they're due in a week. One is about money market fund reforms (think big pots of money that institutions and well-off individuals play with), and the other is about customer protection rules for broker-dealers (the guys who buy and sell stocks for us). They're complicated, hefty things that the Commissioners have to weigh in on, all while juggling this whistleblower case. It's like trying to balance a set of encyclopedias on one hand while catching a frisbee with the other.
Mark and Hester are saying that they've got too many plates spinning in the air, and it's leading to a messy juggling act. They think the Commission should be a bit more picky about what it chooses to tackle at the same time, rather than trying to bake every pie in the recipe book in one oven.
TLDRS:
- Hester and Mark want to abandon protecting whistleblower rights because the SEC is busy...
- "Sure, supporting whistleblowers is great, but look at all these rules we have to review!" They argue that the sheer volume of work means they can't give each issue the attention it deserves.
- It's like saying they can't save a cat stuck in a tree because they're too busy figuring out how to herd a bunch of runaway bulls.
