Texas Department of Transportation v. Needham

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that an employer’s power to conduct internal investigative or disciplinary procedures does not satisfy standard for appropriate law enforcement authority under the Act
• holding that the Whistleblower Act applies if the employee had a good-faith, reasonable belief that the report was made to an appropriate law enforcement authority
• holding that the entity must have the authority to regulate, enforce, investigate, or prosecute the particular law that the employee reported had been violated; general authority is not enough
• holding that the statutory definition’s limiting language does not include an employer’s power to regulate and investigate employee’s conduct in order to internally discipline employees for an alleged violation
• holding that employee’s participation in TxDOT’s internal disciplinary process was insufficient to support finding of good faith belief that he reported to proper authority
• holding that TxDOT was not appropriate law enforcement authority to enforce laws related to driving while intoxicated, reasoning that “the particular law the public employee reported violated is critical to the determination”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).