Key Takeaways:

• On October 21, 2013, the Southern District of New York, in Liu v. Siemens, A.G., became the second district court to hold that the anti-retaliation provision of Dodd-Frank does not apply to protect whistleblower conduct outside the United States.
• The court applied the presumption against extraterritoriality articulated by the Supreme Court in Morrison v. Nat’l Austl. Bank Ltd., to hold that nothing in the plain language of Dodd-Frank’s anti-retaliation provision suggests that it should apply extraterritorially and, accordingly, the provision does not extend to protect “overseas whistleblowers.”
• The decision is also noteworthy for the court’s dicta implicitly criticizing the Fifth Circuit’s recent decision in Asadi v. G.E. Energy, LLC, which narrowly interpreted the scope of the statutory definition of “whistleblower” under Dodd-Frank.