In this time of economic uncertainty, when blowing the whistle on an employer’s wrongdoing may seem especially risky, a recent Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision offers support to those willing to take that risk. In Ziparo v. CSX Transportation, Inc., decided November 25, 2025, the court overturned Circuit precedent to harmonize the Circuit with the Supreme Court’s whistleblower-friendly ruling in Murray v. UBS Securities, underscoring the necessity of broad anti-retaliation protections for workers in industries that impact public safety.

A Conductor’s Push for Public Safety

Cody Ziparo worked as a freight train conductor for CSX Transportation from 2006 until his termination in 2016. In his court filings, he alleged that starting in 2016, his supervisors pressured him to fraudulently inflate his productivity reports to pad their own bonuses. Ziparo refused, first informally but later through CSX’s ethics hotline. He also asserted that his supervisors were creating an unsafe work environment by exacting such punishing pressure on him that he could not focus on his work.

About a month after Ziparo filed his formal complaint, he made a potentially life-threatening mistake on the job: he failed to properly reset a train switch, which could have resulted in derailing an oncoming train. CSX terminated him for this safety violation, claiming that the seriousness of his mistake merited termination, which was distinct from his whistleblowing. However, Ziparo countered that the Company was using the switch reset mistake as a pretext for retaliation based on his fraud complaints, supporting his contention with evidence that the company only terminated six out of seventeen employees who committed similar violations.

Two Dismissals and a Too-High Hurdle

When Ziparo pursued his claims under the Federal Railroad Standards Act (FRSA), 49 U.S.C. § 20109, in federal district court, the court applied the Second Circuit’s years-old standard requiring whistleblowers making retaliation claims to prove their employer’s “retaliatory intent”—that their employer acted with animus, prejudice, or hostility toward them because of their protected activity. This standard placed a heavy burden on whistleblowers because of the stark information asymmetry between employees and their employers. Rarely do bad actors openly admit that retaliatory animus spurred their adverse actions against whistleblowing employees, so plaintiffs were often left to demonstrate a subjective state of mind with severely limited information.

This demanding standard spelled dismissal for Ziparo—twice. Despite the suspicious timing of his termination just a month after his ethics hotline report and evidence that the company fired him for an offense that did not spell dismissal for the majority of employees, the district court hearing his case found that he fell short of his burden to demonstrate CSX’s animus, prejudice, or hostility.

Murray Rights the Retaliation Test for Statutes Following the AIR21 Framework

In February 2024, the Supreme Court decided Murray v. UBS Securities, LLC, ruling that whistleblowers protesting corporate fraud under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, 18 U.S.C. § 1514A (“SOX”), could demonstrate retaliation without proving an employer’s intent.

Under Murray, SOX whistleblowers need only show that their whistleblowing activity was a “contributing factor” in the adverse employment action, meaning it played some role in the employer’s decision. This “contributing factor” causation standard is a “broad and forgiving” causation standard, as distinct from some of the other causation standards applied under anti-retaliation statutes. Greatwide Dedicated Transp. II, LLC v. United States Dep’t of Lab., 72 F.4th 544, 556 (4th Cir. 2023) (noting that “[a] contributing factor is any factor which, alone or in combination with other factors, tends to affect in any way the outcome of the [adverse personnel] decision” (internal quotation marks and citations omitted)).

The Court noted that SOX borrows its framework from the Wendell H. Ford Aviation Investment and Reform Act for the 21st Century, 49 U.S.C. § 42121 (“AIR21”), which intentionally paves an easier path for whistleblowers than many statutes because of the importance of safety issues in the aviation industry. The reasoning followed that SOX, a statute designed to facilitate insight into potentially harmful financial practices among publicly traded companies, should use a similarly whistleblower-friendly standard.

With Ziparo, the Second Circuit Overturns Precedent to Apply Murray to Railroad Workers

Following Murray, the Second Circuit reassessed the daunting standard that twice dashed Ziparo’s efforts to vindicate his rights. In coming to this decision, the Court of Appeals reasoned that like SOX, the FRSA derives its statutory scheme from AIR21. And like SOX and AIR21, FRSA concerns an industry with significant potential to create public harm.

The three-judge panel emphasized that under Murray, the FRSA’s text and remedial purpose cannot support imposing the Circuit’s heightened intent requirement. Judge Gerard Lynch, writing for the court, noted that requiring proof of retaliatory intent would undermine the statute’s goal of promoting railway safety by encouraging workers to report hazardous conditions without fear.

Instead, FRSA whistleblowers can establish a prima facie case of retaliation through circumstantial evidence alone, including the timing of an employer’s adverse action. This holding, coupled with FRSA’s burden shifting framework requiring employers to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that the company would have made the same decision absent an employee’s whistleblowing activity, makes the law a formidable protection for would-be whistleblowers.

With this decision, the court explicitly overruled its own precedent in Tompkins v. Metro-North Commuter Railroad Co.

Implications for Whistleblowers

Ziparo is a victory not just for railroad workers in the Second Circuit, but for whistleblowers across myriad industries throughout the country. After Murray underscored the statutory intent to ease SOX whistleblowers’ burdens, Ziparo expanded that reasoning to create a protective framework for whistleblowers in other industries with major implications for public safety. The Second Circuit’s application of Murray to the FRSA creates a roadmap for other circuits to follow in applying the rationale of Murray to parallel statutes regulating industries such as food production, health care, and energy, including:

• Affordable Care Act, 29 U.S.C. § 218c
• Anti-Money Laundering Act, 31 U.S.C. § 5323(g)
• Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010, 12 U.S.C. § 5567
• Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, 15 U.S.C. §2087
• Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act, 15 U.S.C. § 7a-3
• Energy Reorganization Act, 42 U.S.C. § 5851
• Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act, 49 U.S.C. 30171
• Pipeline Safety Improvement, 49 U.S.C. §60129
• Food Safety Modernization Act, 21 U.S.C. § 399d
• Surface Transportation Assistance Act, 49 U.S.C. §31105
• Taxpayer First Act, 26 U.S.C. § 7623(d)
• Wendell H. Ford Aviation Investment and Reform Act for the 21st Century, 49 U.S.C. § 42121

Following Ziparo, workers in industries regulated by these statutes can report safety concerns with significantly more confidence in their whistleblower protections.

Conclusion

The Second Circuit’s decision in Ziparo v. CSX Transportation highlights the broad impact of Murray v. UBS Securities in supporting whistleblowers by eliminating the retaliatory intent requirement for many whistleblower statutes, correctly applying the more protective contributing factor test Congress included in these laws.

Ziparo’s test better reflects the reality facing whistleblowers: retaliation rarely shows up as an openly hostile vendetta. More often, it’s one factor among many that influences employment decisions. Eliminating the intent requirement allows whistleblowers like Ziparo to obtain redress for the harm they have suffered and to tell their stories to the public they sought to protect.