A member of an insurer’s founding family is a contractor, not an employee, and therefore cannot file a whistleblower suit, a federal district court ruled.

Robert L. Moody Jr., whose father had been chairman and CEO of Galveston, Texas-based American National Insurance Co., had filed suit against ANICO claiming employee retaliation in violation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act’s whistleblower protection provisions, according to Friday’s ruling by the U.S. District Court in Galveston in Robert L. Moody, Jr. and Moody Insurance Group v. American National Insurance Co. 

ANICO provides life insurance, annuities, health insurance, credit insurance, pension products, and property and casualty insurance for personal lines, among other lines of business.

ANICO argued Mr. Moony was a contractor, not an employee, and therefore not eligible to sue the company under Sarbanes-Oxley.

The ruling cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Lawson v. FMR LLC, in which the court held whistleblower protection includes employees of a public company’s private contractors and subcontractors.

Mr. Moody “insists he meets SOX’s [Sarbanes-Oxley’s] regulatory definition of an employee. … Because he was an ‘agent, contractor or subcontractor to ANICO, ’ Moody argues he was effectively working for a covered person, and thus can bring a SOX-retaliation claim as employee,” the ruling said.

“ANICO, on the other hand, maintains that because Moody was its contractor, he was not its employee. And while an employee of a contractor for a publicly traded company may bring a SOX-retaliation claim, he must bring it against his employer — not against a publicly traded company,” it said.

“Moody never unequivocally asserts that he was employed by ANICO” and “provides no facts that support employee status,” the ruling said. He “holds that SOX protects, as employees of the public company, the public company’s contractors and agents,” but “Lawson includes no such holding. … Lawson also does not embrace the broad regulatory definition of ‘employee’ that Moody relies on,” the court said in granting ANICO’s motion to dismiss the case.

ANICO attorney Harry M. Reasoner, a partner of Vinson & Elkins LLP In Houston, said Mr. Moody Jr., who is the eldest son of the company’s founder, was passed over in favor of his brother, Ross Moody, who is now non-executive chair of ANICO.

Mr. Reasoner said that “the ruling does illustrate the soundness of the Supreme Court position in limiting whistleblower cases to controversies between employers and employees.”

Mr. Moody’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment.